Werewolves of Narnia
by bythesea
Summary: A Mrs. Macready adventure. I always wondered why an imaginative fellow like Prof. Kirke would want such a dull housekeeper. The answer must be that she isn't what she seems. It's a prequel to Lion, Witch & Wardrobe.
1. Chapter 1

Mrs. Macready had determined well in advance of picking them up at the railway station that she would resent the presence of the children. There they were standing on that pitiful little platform, which always looked to her as if the roof had been torn off by an unexpected typhoon. They had a look of being lost in the world, understandable in the circumstances. They were well-scrubbed and attractive too. The little girl was undeniably adorable. Mrs. Macready should have felt an affinity for them. After all, she had herself dropped down here in the middle of nowhere six months ago, a wrenching change after years of life in London. Mrs. Macready knew that this was small minded of her. It was fine and good of the Professor to take in evacuated children as his duty to King and country—and it _was_ good, that went without saying—but she was nearly at her wit's end playing housekeeper these months. Patience was not one of her strong points.

Ah, well, it was an insignificant sacrifice to make for the good of the nation. She told herself she was a woman of high principles. She should jolly well feel ashamed of herself if she didn't button her lips and put up with it. But what was she expected to do about these children? Heaven forbid that they be allowed to run wild! Was she to play governess as well? Hadn't she already done her bit to nurture the future of the British race? Of course, she only had one son. "Oh, you have one son," the village women said, as if one son was, after all, better than nothing.

"I thought we'd be riding in a horse-drawn buggy," piped up the younger of the two boys.

"We live in the country, we don't live in the nineteenth century!" she replied sharply. There, that would put a touch of frost on the beginning of the relationship.

"Sorry." He didn't look particularly sorry. More annoyed, she thought.

"He meant no offense, ma'am," his brother added helpfully. The younger boy frowned at him. He did not like apologies to be made on his behalf.

Nineteenth century, indeed. That was when most of the house's plumbing had seen its best days. Mrs. Macready allowed herself a slight smile, knowing that she was not being observed. She was a product of the nineteenth century too. Hopefully those were not _her_ best days.

At least she didn't have to do the extra cooking and cleaning. Betty could do the extra laundry and Margaret, the cook, was sheer brilliance at handling the old stove. Mrs. Macready thought of her own mother wrestling with that black iron dinosaur of a range in their house. Cooking with that reminded her of stoking the engine of a locomotive. She could still picture her mother, her pale face shiny with sweat, and the smudges of flour on her temples or her cheeks, like ghostly fingerprints.

And here, in the countryside, one was expected to do one's own baking just as her mother had. Not that there was anything wrong with my baking, Mrs. Macready thought, or my cooking. Gerald and Ian had never complained. Of course, her son Ian had a stoic way about him. She couldn't remember him singing the praises of her cooking, either. He expected to have his supper on time, and didn't think there was anything further to be said. He had a good, reliable appetite. Gerald, on the other hand, had his tongue loosened after a meal, even without any beer. It wasn't so much her cooking, she knew. Almost anything would set him off chattering. If no other topic of conversation crossed his mind he could always extoll the virtues of a good insurance policy. He had a happy relationship with the rest of the universe that needed to find expression.

Mrs. Macready likened herself to a tiger at the zoo these days, as it paced back and forth. The inactivity of the last three months was weighing on her. Nothing had been achieved in that time. All she had done was wait. Nothing, as far as she could tell, had happened. It only compounded her exasperation to know that Gerald had, predictably, adapted so well to his new surroundings. She had known that country living came naturally to him. She wasn't quite prepared for the enthusiasm with which he would embrace life in the village. Or the enthusiasm with which the village would embrace him. She, on the other hand, had grown up alongside Gerald in Granthorne, Somerset, but thought she had no particular affinity for one place over another. Gerald was well on his way to becoming a widely admired and well liked citizen. Dozens had shown up at his birthday party, the neighborhood ladies bringing home-made pies and pastries. He was president of the local opera appreciation society and a member of the choir. If they stayed a year he would run for village council and win. His wife on the other hand, well, she was a bit of a killjoy. That was the whispered consensus. A flinty old nag. No doubt many felt sorry for Gerald. Mrs. Macready snorted. The children stole shy glances at her.

As the tires of the Daimler sedan made a satisfying crunch in the gravel driveway of Professor Kirke's mansion she wondered how she had gotten into this predicament. At times she could scarcely believe she had decided to come here. It had started, or at least her involvement had begun, with that business of the werewolves in the tube station.


	2. Chapter 2

The wall was covered in large, shiny white tiles. They looked a little dingy, but she was not sure if they were yellowed by all the cigarette smoke and dust that had drifted up or whether it was an effect of the light from the dim bulb high in the ceiling. There was no doubt, though, that the wall was solid. There were no hidden doors or openings in it. Too bad there wasn't a brighter light she could bring up to examine it by. Mrs. Macready ran her hands over the surface and examined it closely. On the floor were puddles of water. She stepped through them in her high leather boots. Leading away from the wall were wet paw marks on the tiled floor. It hadn't been raining that day, not in London. There was a detail in the report that leapt out of her memory. The witness had said the wolves were covered in snow.

It had been fifteen minutes earlier that she sat in the office of her supervisor, Eliphas Dunleavy of the Bureau of Magical Enforcement in the Ministry of Magic.

She had said, "Let me get this straight. A pack of wolves comes spilling out of a wall as if it was no more solid than fog, in a corner of the Down Street Underground station. And you want me to investigate. Really, isn't this a job for the animal control people?"

He had that placid, patient grin that told her he was willing to let her vent her objections but he would have none of them. It was a direct order and she would come around.

"I assure you that no one could be more suitable, my dear Mrs. Macready." This meant, she knew, that he could not be bothered to trouble any of the men in Criminal Investigations to look into such a trivial matter. She had to admit that it was not, on the face of it, a criminal matter. The wolves had disappeared somewhere in the station and no one had apparently been harmed. In the back of her mind she had already formed the certain opinion that the wolves were an elaborate visual illusion. It had to be some sort of childish prank.

The passers-by seemed to pay scant attention to the middle-aged lady dressed in a long, black leather coat examining the wall. They were intent on going down the nearby escalator to the Circle Line train platform or coming out, headed for the street exit. As metropolitan urbanites they knew better than to show interest in a possibly eccentric woman exhibiting odd behavior. Gradually, Mrs. Macready became aware that she was being watched. Someone was standing ten paces or so behind her.

She turned to look. He was a young man in his early twenties wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He had on a thin beige suit, as one might expect for a summer garden party. Mrs. Macready wondered if he didn't feel chilly. He had an expression of agonized indecision. His body seemed to shift weight in different directions as if he couldn't decide where to move next. Mrs. Macready didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for him. As she fixed a stare on him he seemed increasingly anxious. Finally he stepped forward.

"Is there some reason—that is to say, would you have some reason—." He coughed a couple of times unconvincingly. "Is there any particular reason you would be interested in that wall, as you clearly are?"

"Oh, no, it's a tile wall like any other." Mrs. Macready saw no reason to be helpful. "What brings you to it?"

He paused to consider whether he should be open and honest. "I'm, I'm a freelance newspaper writer and an editor phoned me and offered me a tip."

"I see. What sort of tip?"

"He said a person saw something peculiar. He saw—." The young man paused and continued in a barely audible voice, "—wolves running out of the wall."

"Well, no one would believe a story like that, would they?" Mrs. Macready replied and turned to leave.

"Now look here! I've told you what brought me down here but you haven't explained yourself at all."

"Have you considered that I'm perhaps an animal control officer with the London Metropolitan Wildlife Board?"

"Are you?" He seemed very glad to have discovered a shared interest in this impossible story with some official body.

"No, I just made it up. I do wish you'd stop pestering me."

At that moment her attention was distracted by the sound of nails clicking on the hard floor. Through an opening she could see a gray blur of canine bodies flashing past. There were perhaps six to eight of them.

"Good gracious, wolves," the man blurted out, unnecessarily. He stared in disbelief at the empty space they had passed through.

The Down Street Station was a connecting point between two subway lines. The sign above the opening indicated that the wolves were in the passageway leading to the westbound platform of the Central Line. The bantering forgotten, Mrs. Macready started the pursuit without a word. The young newspaperman, however, was not about to be left behind. She considered the option of immobilizing him but for some reason she refrained. Perhaps the prospect of company pleased her. Perhaps she had a secret need for an audience. In any case, she was grateful that there was a short lull between trains and the area was empty of the public.

The wolves were already out of sight but Mrs. Macready did not slow down. Part way down the passage, on the left, there was a metal door reading, 'Entry to authorized personnel only'. Mrs. Macready came to a halt.

He was surprised how quickly a woman of her age could run. He caught up to her, slightly breathless. "Well, they can't have gone this way," he pointed out. "Wolves can't open doors. Besides, it's locked." He tried turning the knob.

Mrs. Macready pulled out a wooden wand. She stared at the door and waved the wand slowly in front of her. The door wavered as if it were a mirage and disappeared. A branching passage was revealed. It was dimly lit and the walls were bare concrete unlike the tiled walls in the rest of the station. It had the look of age and neglect. There were none of the bright posters and advertisements jostling each other for the public's attention as elsewhere.

"This is an abandoned section," Mrs. Macready explained in answer to his unspoken question.

"But how did you do that?"

"The door was only an illusion. It's magic."

The young man had his notebook out and was furiously scribbling away. At this point his pencil came off the paper in mid-sentence. "No, seriously."

"I'm being perfectly serious. I always am when I talk about magic." She turned to look at him steadily.

This was enough for him to cope with for now. He didn't think to ask why there was an illusion of a door.

Mrs. Macready was forming an explanation for the unasked question. She was going to say that there were places in the world, close by the familiar paths that ordinary people tread, which have been chosen by wizards and witches for their own use. They were hidden and protected by magic charms to discourage intrusions.

As to why wizards would be interested in a bit of abandoned subway she knew that there were magicians who felt a particular affinity to tunnels and underground spaces. They could sense the—what did they call it?—pulse of the Earth, the waves of energy that travel through the ground. They came down here to meditate and renew their connections with the subterranean world.

But all she said was, "No time to explain. We're falling behind." There was something else she thought of. The wolves had not been fooled by the illusion either.

They sprinted into the abandoned passage. The young man was trying to take photographs with a small camera he had slung over his shoulder. Breathing heavily, he managed to gasp, "My name is Denis, by the way. Denis with one 'n'."

"Delighted to make your acquaintance."

Denis stayed close to her but was happy to let her lead the way. He was still running with a notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other.

The lights in the ceiling had evidently mostly burned out. There was only one giving an orange glow some fifty yards ahead. Mrs. Macready held up her wand. Its tip gave a faint bluish glow. It was only enough to reveal any obstacles in their path.

Mrs. Macready thought out loud. "They wouldn't have stayed in the public area. This is the only way they could have gone. But I don't think there's much chance we can catch them now. They see much better than we do in this light and they run much faster on four legs." She came to a halt and paused to listen. There was a distant, regular metallic rhythm. "Sounds like they're going down stairs. Let's check that door." They advanced to a door marked 'Emergency stairs'. It was unlocked.

"I don't see how they could turn the door knobs," Denis complained. "These are real doors, aren't they?" Mrs. Macready shushed him. They entered the concrete stairwell. Denis's first steps clanged loudly.

"Hold it," Mrs. Macready ordered. She pulled out her magic wand, paused to concentrate for twenty seconds and then restored the wand to her belt. "That was a noise dampening spell." They resumed their descent.

Denis's face had a troubled grimace. "There's something I'm not catching. Are you speaking in some sort of code, or in metaphors? Did you just say, 'a spell'? And is that stick you're waving, a—."

"It's a magic wand. Yes." Mrs. Macready felt a twinge of regret that she couldn't give Denis a fuller explanation but there wasn't time.

At the bottom of the stairwell was a door marked, 'Warning: track level'. Denis cautiously opened the door. They stepped out beside the subway tracks.

"There's no sign of them," Denis whispered as loudly as he dared. "Are you sure they've come this way?" He was more than half hoping that she would give up their pursuit before they—well, before they caught up to anything, especially anything with sharp fangs and powerful jaws.

It took their eyes some moments to adjust to the low light level. There were only enough regularly spaced lights to allow maintenance workers to make their periodic inspections. The air was stagnant and warm. Denis began to feel the oppressiveness of the dark. Without being aware of it he was lowering his head as he walked, as if the ceiling were slowly pressing down on them. For a moment, Denis could imagine that this round tunnel was made by some sort of subterranean burrowing animal. The only comforting thing about the darkness to Denis was that it was genuinely dark and there were no glowing wolf eyes watching them.

Mrs. Macready looked around and answered Denis's question. "I'm almost certain that they don't intend to go any further. This is just the sort of place they would feel comfortable in. It's warm and dark and enclosed. They would use this as a home base. There's not much likelihood of being troubled by curious intruders here."

Denis gestured in exasperation. "Well, naturally. That's because sane people don't go chasing after a pack of wolves." A thought occurred to him. "Say, these aren't normal wolves, are they?"

"No, I suspect they're werewolves. Shape-shifters, to be more accurate."

"How do you know so much about werewolves? Did you study them at school?"

"Not especially but they're part of the Magical Creatures class," Mrs. Macready said offhandedly. "Let's not discuss that now. I don't think we need to go any further. I don't really like the odds."

As if this was a signal, a crescendo of howling erupted all around them and echoed off the walls and floors.

"We're surrounded," squeaked Denis in a voice higher-pitched and more panic-stricken than he had intended.

"I think we had better leave," said Mrs. Macready, with some anxiety.

They retreated the way they came. Immediately the howling died off to be replaced by a rhythmic drumming on metal. Mrs. Macready advanced with long but unhurried strides.

"Shouldn't we be running?" Dennis ventured to ask.

"Why? Do you think we can outrun them?"

Dennis abruptly stopped as if he were digging his heels into the floor. Ahead of them a tall figure was blocking the passage.

"What _is_ that thing?" To Denis, who had taken classes in ancient mythology, the first thing that came to mind was Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the Egyptian underworld. It was fitting at least to encounter it in the Underground. The creature stood on two legs, but they weren't human legs; they terminated in a configuration of ankle and paw like a wolf. The torso was almost human. The arms were long with human-like hands, as far as Denis could tell. The head had sharply pointed ears and a long muzzle. No, he thought, these were not ordinary wolves. The thing had to be seven feet tall. It stepped from side to side as it awaited them, as if to show that it was not some statue.

"Now I know how they opened the doors. Opposable thumbs." Denis shook his head in disbelief. There seemed something unsteady about the creature's stance. "It's not used to being on two legs," he thought and for a moment he almost chortled in delight. Then he realized that he was grasping at straws.

Mrs. Macready walked to within fifteen feet of the creature. It stood, barely moving. At times its eyes caught the light and turned into luminous yellow ovals that hovered ghostlike in the darkness. Mrs. Macready lifted her wand. A crack of blue light emanated from the tip, arced across the space and struck the werewolf in the center of its chest. It did not register any effect at all. Denis gasped.

"Magic doesn't seem to work on it," Mrs. Macready said, her grim determination unfazed. She slipped the wand back into her belt.

The werewolf ran its long red tongue over its teeth. It snarled in anticipation, a low reverberant sound that sent Denis's heart to his throat. Denis stood transfixed as if he had forgotten how to make his muscles move. The creature strode forward in anticipation of finishing its kill. On reaching Mrs. Macready it bent down, and with a human sense of drama it opened its jaws wide to show the humans the last sight they would see in this world: its magnificent set of sharp, glistening teeth. Mrs. Macready whipped her Walther semi-automatic pistol out of her hip holster and fired two shots down the wolf's throat before the beast toppled backwards.

"Werewolves. They're so stupid." She grabbed Denis's sleeve with her left hand and they ran.

Behind them a growling pack was coalescing out of the darkness. Mrs. Macready unloaded the rest of the clip into the surging mass of hairy gray bodies. The flashes of gunfire in the dim tunnel and the loudness of the shots in that confined space nearly drove Denis into a disoriented panic. Luckily, all he had to do was run.

They reached the stairwell door and charged up the stairs. Looking below them a werewolf was opening the door. Mrs. Macready fired some shots at the opening. She didn't know if she hit any lupine bodies but a couple of bullets clanged off the metal and forced the wolf to close the door.

"Magic doesn't work on the werewolves but doors are another matter." Mrs. Macready brandished her wand again. Within seconds the door was bathed in a shimmering blue light. The glow lingered for some moments as she continued her spell. When it faded the witch merely muttered, "That should hold them until they can tear the door off its hinges, which I have no doubt they'll do."

"I say, how did we get from a situation where we were chasing the wolves to one where they're chasing us? This can't be right!"

Mrs. Macready glared at him. "It all makes perfect sense. At first they were hoping to elude us altogether. But we came too close to their den. They don't want us telling other humans and bringing them back here."

"So now I suppose they're going to kill us, is that it?"

Mrs. Macready glared at him again but only momentarily. They were both panting from the effort of running up the stairs. There was a sharp clatter on the steps below. "Damn," said Denis, "I've dropped my camera." It did not take him long to decide not to go back to retrieve it.

Back at the top of the emergency stairwell the illusory door beckoned them from a distance. Even as they ran in that direction they could hear another door behind them opening.

"They're coming up another stairway."

They reached the ordinary part of the tube station. "What we need is a door, and not an illusory door. Can't you, you know, make one appear?" Denis pleaded.

"Out of thin air?" Mrs. Macready asked, incredulously. "I deal in magic not in wishful thinking." She had that schoolmistress tone that she so often heard in herself and which made her cringe, but she could not help the way the words flew from her lips.

"Well, I was just asking."

They stood and waited. Never had Denis been so glad to see the normal interior of a tube station. It was an immense relief to be back in the light. The passengers flowed past in the corridor and spared barely a glance towards them. The minutes passed. There was no sign of the werewolves. "Could they have given up the pursuit?" Mrs. Macready wondered. Perhaps they were counting on no one believing her story. But then they knew she was a witch not a layperson. They could be seeking some other refuge. Mrs. Macready made a move towards the platform for the Circle Line train southbound.

Denis calmed down enough to give thought to his journalistic work. He was eager to get answers from Mrs. Macready. "So you're something of a—." His face screwed up from the effort of accepting the outlandish. "A witch."

"That's the common terminology, yes."


	3. Chapter 3

Denis was silenced for a time by the need to absorb the unlikely bit of information that the middle-aged woman beside him was an admitted witch.

"I'm feeling a little dazed here. I seem to be having difficulty understanding what's happening."

"I work for the Bureau of Magical Enforcement," said Mrs. Macready helpfully. "I suppose you're extremely curious to know about my employers." She had an expression of such benign pleasantness that Denis wondered if she intended to blast him with some magic if he decided to pursue the matter further.

Denis took a deep breath and, following her doggedly, flipped open his notebook and began taking notes.

"The Bureau is but one department in the Ministry of Magic which governs the magical community. The Ministry is well known to the regular government. The government lends its power to support the Ministry. One of the Ministry's primary concerns is to keep witches hidden from ordinary people, or laymen, as witches called them. Most wizards and witches are well integrated into the larger community and many lead quite normal lives except for their regular forays into magical recreations."

"Magical weekends in the country?" Denis queried.

"Something like that. The rest of the time they're dentists, lawyers, teachers, and so forth."

"Can anyone be a witch, then?"

"No, only those born with the power. Witches refer to it as 'The Calling'. I can remember when I first learned of my talent. It was at the annual charity fair held at Buxley House, a country mansion near my village of Granthorne in Somerset. On the lawns of the estate they set up merry-go-rounds, coconut shies, all sorts of tents and booths designed to enrapt a nine-year-old, as I was then. The fortune-teller's tent particularly attracted me. My friend Polly dared me to go in. Inside was a sinister old crone--."

"Not a Gypsy fortune-teller?" asked Denis skeptically.

"Well, I suppose not a real one. She was dressed up that way. She shot out a withered arm and grabbed hold of my wrist. She said, 'I have the Witch's Sight, and I can see that you have the power.'"

"Now you've lost me. What is Witch's Sight?"

"It's an ability some witches have to see magic in operation. Indeed, they can see the underlying resonances of ordinary objects as well. They see patterns of light and color emanating from ordinary objects. They see magical operations as disturbances in these patterns. Very few witches have this ability. I certainly don't. It's just as well, I've always thought; it must be terribly distracting in everyday life."

"Yes, imagine driving a car and seeing all these lights and colors flashing. But what happened with this Gypsy witch?"

"She felt it was her duty to develop my talent. She didn't want to see anyone waste it. She handed me a tiny book of spells and told me to practice when I was certain I was alone. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was just glad to get out of her tent because she was such a creepy old woman."

"And she never did tell you your fortune."

"No," Mrs. Macready laughed. "But I never gave her sixpence either! I was curious about what she said, of course, and later I did try some of the spells. I was delighted they worked. You might think that this was an enormous event in a young person's life to discover they had this talent, and in retrospect, I suppose it was, but at the time I took it for granted, just as other children could juggle or wiggle their ears.

"Now I've gotten off topic. You were wondering about my work. There are departments in the Ministry of Magic to deal with the various needs of the magical community. Not the least of these is the Ministry's efforts to control its own people."

"So you're something of a police officer among, um, your own kind?"

"No, not quite. I don't usually make arrests or deal with criminal matters. You see, a code of conduct for witches was drawn up at an international conference in 1739, the Code of Naples, it's called. All witches registered with the Ministry swear to live by the code before they are allowed to practice magic. They swear not to use magic against laymen, for example, except for self-defense or other pressing need. Violations of the code are not what you might consider crimes. I prefer to use moral suasion to try to get people to alter their ways. I try not to use the force of the law if I can help it. I assure you my role is a modest one and totally lacking in glamor."

"But you carry a gun."

Mrs. Macready laughed. "I almost never carry firearms. It was quite a struggle to convince the armaments people to hand one over. If I had to follow normal procedures I would still be filling out the forms now."

Her mind flashed back to the scene at the counter where she was arguing with the clerk. They couldn't believe that anyone would have the audacity to stand there and demand a gun when she was clearly lacking a proper form designating her current duty as hazardous, involving possibly hostile and uncooperative elements, signed by her supervisor. They weren't interested at all in hearing that a gun might prove useful when dealing with wolves. She despaired of wasting more time when the tall, lanky figure of Athanasius Kutcher chanced to enter the office. Kutcher had established a reputation as a fierce vampire hunter back in the Edwardian heyday of English bloodsuckers, before most of them emigrated to New Orleans. Few who saw him now could reconcile the white-haired man with a persistent tremor in his hands with the legendary vampire hunter. With his dull white skin it was tempting to joke that he looked more like a victim than a hunter. But there was no doubt he was still accorded great respect in the Bureau. To Mrs. Macready he was something of a mentor.

"What is this all about then, Macready?"

She seized the opportunity and explained the situation. Kutcher did not need much convincing. He slammed a pale, vein-lined fist on the counter and growled, "This woman needs to be properly armed." He never seemed to raise his voice above a mutter but he radiated an irascible energy. Mrs. Macready thanked him.

"You used silver bullets, I suppose."

Denis's comment took her out of her thoughts. She chuckled. "I don't know where you hear these silly superstitions. A bullet is a bullet." It seemed odd to her, now that she thought of it, that the Bureau used Walther pistols. They were supposed to be favored by German Army officers and the Luftwaffe.

For a few minutes Denis might have been naïve enough to think that the subject of his interview was feeling chatty that evening or that his charm was persuasive in encouraging her to talk. Then it occurred to him.

"Wait, if you witches are supposed to be kept secret, why are you telling me all this?"

Mrs. Macready smiled again but it didn't seem much of an affable one to Denis. "I don't mind saying these things to you because very shortly I plan to wipe them from your memory."

The crowd on the platform did not seem to have heard of anything unusual reported elsewhere in the station. There were tired-looking women with brown paper parcels wrapped in string under their arms. Men with briefcases going home from work late. Young couples dressed for the evening out. The normalcy of it made what Mrs. Macready and Denis had experienced in the abandoned section of the station seem dreamlike.

"You can't be serious about wiping out my memory!" exclaimed Denis. "I have a story to file."

Mrs. Macready wasn't listening to the steady drone of Denis's voice in her left ear. The level of concentration required to perform magic had consumed her energy. She shook her head to clear the sense of lethargy. The thought flashed in her mind. "They're shape-shifters. That means they could be…" Mrs. Macready scanned the platform from one end to the other. A train was pulling into the station, with its rubber wheels rumbling on the tracks, the brakes squealing, the air rushing by the body of the train, all combined in a familiar roar.

"Let's get on," Mrs. Macready muttered quietly to Denis. The familiar process of disembarking passengers and the crowd on the platform sifting past each other was proceeding in orderly fashion. "Don't stare, but glance over at the two men at the end of the platform." Mrs. Macready indicated with a slight tilt of her head as she and Denis stepped through the open doors.

There were two men wearing identical gray jumpsuits. "That's not unusual," argued Denis. "They're probably automotive mechanics. They wear those suits to cover their street clothes. I mean, I wouldn't wear such things on the subway, but--."

"They haven't been anywhere near a car," Mrs. Macready muttered. "Look how spotless they are."

The men met Denis's gaze. Hurriedly they stepped aboard the same car, through the next set of doors. They realized that their identity had been detected. They began to transform. Coarse gray hair sprouted from their skin. Their faces stretched outward. They pulled down the zipper of the suits and climbed out. Their heads rose in the air as their legs lengthened and they were raised up on their paws.

It took a few moments for the others in the car to be drawn from their newspapers and magazines and the general torpor that comes after a long day of work. A woman next to the werewolves began screaming and then a shockwave of panic passed through the passengers. The doors slid shut. The train pulled out of the station.

The passengers pressed against the walls of the car and ducked as low as they could in their seats. A wolf looked over the passengers near him. Then he snatched up a small boy. The mother rose from her seat to grab at her child but the other wolf roughly pushed her back, slamming her against the wall. The boy screamed and kicked his bare legs uselessly in the air as the wolf hoisted him up and advanced down through the car holding up his squirming human shield. Mrs. Macready re-holstered her gun. She retreated to the door between cars, Denis close behind her. The aisle in the subway car was too narrow for both wolves to advance together. The other wolf pulled a hoe from the hands of a hapless gentleman who was taking it home to his garden. The wolf hurled it like a javelin. It struck Denis on the back of the leg and he cried out in pain and crumpled to the floor. The advancing wolf threw the boy aside and made a leap for Denis. Denis was scrambling to his feet when he felt long, sharp claws puncturing his legs. He screamed in agony as he felt himself being dragged back by a tremendous strength. He did not see Mrs. Macready step forward nimbly, take up the hoe and twirl it like a staff. She struck at the wolf's head but he raised up his arm and the hoe caught him on the shoulder. Releasing his grip on Denis, the wolf faced Mrs. Macready and snatched the hoe away from her. He brought it down on his knee and easily snapped it into two like a twig. Then he tossed the shattered pieces aside and opened his jaws to growl and flash his teeth.

Mrs. Macready pulled out her wand and swirled it in figure eight patterns. The advertising poster for Vicks Cough Syrup for Children and a recruiting poster for air raid wardens were pulled off the walls of the car as if they had been sucked by a giant vacuum. They swirled around in the air then plastered themselves onto the wolf's chest; they burst into flames and ignited the wolf's fur. The wolf made a terrifying howling as he fell to the floor and rolled about to put out the flames. Mrs. Macready opened the door at the end of the car, put a hand under Denis's arm and pulled him over the connection between cars and through the door to the next car. She stepped through herself and slammed the door of their new car shut before the unburnt wolf could leap over his partner and reach them.

"Pull out my gun," Mrs. Macready ordered. Denis put aside his injuries and reached for the pistol. Mrs. Macready was aiming her wand at the door handle and holding the door shut by magical force. "You're going to have to shoot when you see him." She could not relax her attention on the door. There was a glass window in the door. Denis held the pistol in both hands with his arms outstretched in front of him. He twisted his head away and screwed up his face as if he expected the gun to explode when he pulled the trigger. "Keep your eyes on the window!" Mrs. Macready admonished. The wolf tried to force the handle but could not. He slammed his body into the door. Momentarily his body came into view through the glass opening. Denis fired. The glass shattered and an animal cry of pain came from the other side.

Mrs. Macready waited to see if the wolf would renew its efforts to open the door. When there was no sign of this she took her wand off the door. There was now a bright blue flame at the tip of her wand. She held it up to the high rail from which hung the leather straps that standing passengers held on to. The tip of the wand cut through the metal with only a tiny hiss and a stream of white smoke. A piece of railing about four feet long fell into her hands. She brought it across the door and sealed it to the wall of the car with blasts of blue light from her wand. "There," she said. Denis was alarmed to see how pale and exhausted she looked, even a bit sickly.

"That was fabulous," was all he could think of to say.

"We're not done yet. That was a good shot, by the way."

"Thanks. I'm getting unspeakable grime all over my linen suit. Not to mention the blood."

"That's why I wear black leather. It's easier to clean the blood off." She thought of her high leather boots and all the punishment she had put them through and all the mud and less pleasant fluids she had washed off them.

The werewolf in the first car that had been set alight had now put out his flames. He clambered onto the seats and deftly lifted up the window and popped it out. "He can read the emergency exit instructions," Mrs. Macready thought. That was better than some human passengers. As she approached the door to have a better look, a wolf's arm flashed through the shattered window. Mrs. Macready danced back with a sharp gasp. The claws scraped over her coat but couldn't catch hold of her. She was gathering herself to finish off the wolf when she saw him collapse onto the steel apron between the two cars. The body shook with the movement of the train but seemed lifeless.

The wolf that had popped out the train's window had pulled himself through. Mrs. Macready thought of trying a shot through both windows but the werewolf was too close to the passengers to permit it. With the strength and agility of a gymnast he vaulted onto the roof of the train.

The train pulled into the next station, Grove Road. The passengers in the two cars had recovered enough from their shock to escape. They shouted to the people on the platform not to get on. Mrs. Macready trained her gun on the car's doors in case the wolf on the roof tried to get in by jumping to the platform and switching cars, but there was no wolf to be seen. The doors closed and the train accelerated again. Mrs. Macready was annoyed with herself that she had allowed all those people to take their werewolf stories with them but there was no time to do anything about it.

They could hear the wolf's heavy steps on the roof of their car. Mrs. Macready allowed herself a moment's relaxation to recover her energy and concentration. As long as the wolf remained on the roof it wasn't a threat, she thought. She slumped into one of the seats. With no passengers left on the car she didn't care if this was an unladylike posture.

A window exploded inward in a shower of glass shards. So much for rest, she thought. She got up, drew her gun and waited by the window. With a shock of gray an arm reached in and snatched her right forearm. The wolf, hanging onto the top windowsill with his left arm, had swung its upper body through the window. Mrs. Macready was unprepared for the wolf's long reach and did not have a chance to step back. She tried to get off a shot with the gun, fighting against the wolf's grip. A shot flashed but the bullet was wildly astray. The gun was forced from her hand and fell with a clatter to the floor.

The wolf was now trying to drag Mrs. Macready out of the still-moving train. She tried to brace herself against the walls with her legs but there was no resisting the wolf's strength. The brakes of the train screeched. The wolf lurched to one side and had to release the witch to keep from pitching forward off the roof. Mrs. Macready fell into the seat. Denis had hit the emergency stop button and the train was squealing to a stop. Denis could hear the scratching of the wolf's claws on the roof. He picked up the pistol and fired upwards. There were loud roars of pain, then a heavy body slumped onto the roof. Denis kept shooting, feeling the rush of adrenaline in his brain. "That's enough," said Mrs. Macready and gestured for him to stop. Through the bullet holes thin trickles of blood fell and puddled on the floor of the car. As the train came to a complete stop they could hear the thud of the wolf's body sliding off the curved roof and behind the track.


	4. Chapter 4

Mrs. Macready sighed. "It's beyond my power to stop all those passengers from telling their stories. And then there'll be an investigation by the transit authorities, and all that. This has been quite a fiasco." She sighed. She seemed exhausted by her evening's work. There were times when she felt her age and this was one of them. If she had been fresh she might have tried a befuddlement spell. The passengers would still have had stories to tell but they would have been different stories and the investigation might have been given up as hopeless. As it was, there was nothing more she could do about it. She would have to hope the Bureau could exercise some influence over the investigations.

She could sense the fear and uncertainty in the rest of the train, stalled as it was in the semi-darkness of the tunnel. Even a witch of rudimentary powers could have sensed such strong emotions emanating from so many.

"I suppose I should clean up that mess of blood they left behind." She stood up with the creakiness of an old woman. "Oh, well, we'll see what we can do."

She took a look at Denis and added, "And the blood you left behind, as well." She looked with a pained expression at his blood-stained trouser legs. He took a brief glance down but was too squeamish for the sight of his own blood.

"I don't suppose you could heal it magically?" he asked.

"I don't have the medical skill, I'm afraid. It would take a wizard with specialized training. Not to say that you haven't earned it with what you did tonight. That was some timely shooting. I have to thank you."

Denis nodded modestly in acknowledgement but said nothing more about it. "Could I settle for a suit-cleaning spell?"

She laughed. "Has anyone ever told you that that suit isn't really the right attire for your line of work? And beige does get dirty so easily."

"All the time. But I'm a stubborn nonconformist."

"At least you don't go about your office wearing a red carnation in your lapel."

"I did that in college."

"I can well imagine you did."

At that point the driver, having walked through the train from the front car, came through the door. "What in Heaven's name is going on back here?" he blustered.

Mrs. Macready looked him squarely in the eye. A vacant look came to his face as if he were mesmerized. She tapped him lightly on the temple with her wand. Without a word he turned around and walked back the way he came.

She and Denis dragged the body of the wolf that had died between the cars through the doors and left it with its companion beside the tracks. In death the werewolves had reverted to their natural wolf form. Mrs. Macready put a spell on the bodies. It wasn't quite invisibility—it was more like a magical camouflage that made the bodies blend into the background—but it worked well enough in the dark tunnel.

She undid some of the damage to the metalwork of the cars but there was nothing she could do about the windows. "I'm afraid it isn't possible to repair the damage to the cars." She shook her head sadly. "Well, they'll have a puzzle on their hands."

The train started again. When it pulled into Aldwych station they could see police constables and an array of transit personnel gathered on the platform.

"We're going to walk off and mix into the crowd," Mrs. Macready told Denis. "I'll see if I can make them not notice us."

The spell worked as Mrs. Macready had hoped. The train was held at the station, no passengers were allowed on, and transit security men boarded to examine it, but no one paid any attention to Mrs. Macready or Denis.

They took a train back to Down Street station. A host of police constables and tracking dogs were milling about the station. A familiar face was with them—Eliphas Dunleavy. He wore a green and blue tie that clashed with his brown overcoat. Mrs. Macready was certain that it was a whim of his to deliberately wear jarring colors, for what purpose she did not know. His white hair was short and slightly curly. He looked like he could be an affable grandfather which, in fact, he was. With Dunleavy were a number of men in overcoats who, though less familiar, Mrs. Macready recognized as criminal investigators for the Bureau. "I'm sorry about all this fuss," her supervisor explained. "I couldn't quite persuade the constabulary to leave matters to us. However, they are cooperative. It got rather out of hand what with all the reports coming from hysterical people in the Underground. Hopefully we can keep those dogs out of the way. That barking does get on my nerves.

"Look, I've brought down Athanasius Kutcher and some of the lads from Criminal Investigations. We're a little short-handed in Werewolf Relations these days. I'll tell him to clear the matter up as quickly as possible. As it is, the story will be in all the newspapers tomorrow." He frowned at her.

The thought of Dunleavy and Kutcher working together surprised Mrs. Macready. Her thoughts flashed back to what Athanasius Kutcher had said weeks earlier when the old vampire hunter had taken her aside for a confidential discussion.

"Are you still working for that Eliphas Dunleavy?" Mrs. Macready nodded. "You had better keep a close eye on him. I've long suspected him of being in sympathy with the Enemy, even being a mole for them, in the heart of the Bureau." Mrs. Macready had long known of Athanasius's antipathy toward her supervisor but this suspicion was new to her.

"Which Enemy is that?"

"Our Enemy is all one and the same."

There was not much to be said in reply to such a portentous pronouncement, and Mrs. Macready kept silent.

"I've heard great things of you, Mrs. Macready. You'll go far in the Bureau. I was wondering if you might be interested in joining my little circle of like-minded agents. Strictly informal, of course, and outside work." Mrs. Macready had heard rumors of Athanasius holding these secret meetings. Athanasius found Bureau rules too limiting in his pursuit of the enemy. She politely declined the offer.

Mrs. Macready eyed her supervisor and thought he was waiting for something. "I'm sorry I couldn't keep things under better control," she admitted.

"Never mind. We'll get the police out of here soon enough. Then our boys will get on with the real investigation."

Mrs. Macready knew that the Bureau had liaisons high up in the various police departments across the land. If cooperation could be obtained and all went well, the police would pretend to go through the usual routines, but, in fact, they would leave it to the Bureau to take care of. In due course the police would make sure the right reports were filed and the matter was tidied up and closed.

"I hope you're not thinking of handing this case over to Athanasius. I know it's not my purview but you asked me to be involved and I'm staying until it's resolved."

"Oh, very well. I know you're too stubborn to change your mind and I don't have the energy to argue." Dunleavy's positions and orders always seemed to prove as watery as his gray eyes.

Mrs. Macready explained as succinctly as she could the events of that night. "The wolves have probably already moved to a new location. I think they're keen to maintain their secrecy."

"Sounds like renegade shape-shifters. Then it's a criminal matter after all," Dunleavy mused. "But you make it sound as if they have some scheme in mind."

"I can't guess what they have in mind, but if they only wanted to kill and create havoc they could have done a horrendous amount of it tonight. Instead they were focused on chasing me down. And why would they care about me? Only because I have an idea where the rest of them are, or were."

"Then you think they're plotting something. An invasion of England, is it? Well, one of the tube supervisors told me he had heard other stories of wolves running in the stations over the past two weeks. No one reported it to the police so we didn't hear of it. Wait, wait. Who is that man?" Dunleavy asked peevishly, looking at Denis. "He's been listening to us."

"He's a journalist I met down here. He's investigating the story too."

"Well, get rid of him." Dunleavy waved his fingers as if to drive off an annoying insect.

Mrs. Macready went over to Denis. "I must have another look at that wall." As they turned, Mrs. Macready gave Dunleavy a look to reassure him that she would take care of Denis in due course.

"Renegade shape-shifters, eh? Is that a common problem among you magical lot?"

Mrs. Macready frowned. "There are two matters that still need to be explained. First, there's the fact that these wolves were not affected by my magic at all."

"That's not normal for shape-shifters?"

"That's not normal for anything. Second, they materialized out of a solid wall. I'd like to know how they pulled that off."

By this time they were approaching the station's ticketing area and the wall was in sight. A man was standing there, a tiny, stooped figure. He was mostly bald with some long strands of lank gray hair falling haphazardly. Mrs. Macready and Denis stood at some distance to observe him. As if mimicking Mrs. Macready's actions of earlier in the evening he too seemed to be going over the wall in minute detail. When he was satisfied with what he had found or not found he reached into his coat pocket and snapped open what appeared to be a large golden pocket watch which he held in the palm of his hand. He paced back and forth in front of the wall looking down at the watch face. Finally, having finished his investigation he snapped the lid shut, frowned and hurriedly walked towards a station exit.

"It looks like, well, a golden compass," suggested Denis.

"Oh, don't be silly. What would a man be doing with a compass inside a tube station?"

"Fine, then. You explain it."

Mrs. Macready regretted how curt she was. She knew it seemed rude and overbearing to others. She declined to offer an alternate explanation. "I think we need to follow him."


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's note: Thanks to all who have read so far, especially anyone who writes reviews. You should realize that the story is worked out except for small details that I change at the last minute. However I will try to make improvements for the next effort. A reminder that place names are mostly fictitious._

* * *

Night had fallen on the metropolis by the time they emerged back on the street. Mrs. Macready looked behind her at the wall of sandbags built up at the entrance of the tube station. She sniffed. What possible use could those be, she wondered. If someone were on the sidewalk when a bomb hit, what were the chances of there being sandbags close enough to offer protection? Over the station entrance a wooden sign had been hung up indicating that it was to be a bomb shelter in case of air raids. Invasion of wolves, she thought with a silent laugh. How was that for an obvious literary metaphor?

Following the bent old man at a safe distance was not difficult at all. He seemed not to be suspicious. There were enough pedestrians to provide cover but not so many as to risk losing their quarry.

"You were saying you went to school to become a witch?" Denis asked.

"Yes, Gladhearts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to be exact."

"An odd name."

"I don't know where it came from. It's very ancient. I always thought it was an attempt at irony."

"You mean you weren't happy there?"

"Not at first. I had mixed feelings about going. I was proud of my talent and happy doing magic. At the same time I wanted very much to be normal like other children. You see, my mother hated that I was a witch. She couldn't quite accept that I was one."

Mrs. Macready could remember when her family finally found out about her talent. When she was eleven she could perform the spells given her by the 'Gypsy' woman well enough that they were second nature to her. Her mother caught her levitating a mug of milk across the kitchen. She slapped her daughter. The mug fell and smashed. Mrs. Macready's face flushed red with embarrassment at being caught doing something forbidden but also with indignation that something she did almost without thinking would bring punishment down on her. It was a perfectly harmless and convenient way to perform household tasks. The two were locked in angry stares for what seemed a long time. Mrs. Macready couldn't understand why her mother was suddenly so furious. That made her more stubborn in return. Finally her mother broke the silence, turning away and muttering, "Clean up that mess."

"My mother was a woman of few words. She was sullen and angry about my witchcraft and she never explained why. I only heard the story from my grandmother. Apparently it was a bit of family history, passed down through the generations. One of our ancestors, a woman in the 16th century, was hung for witchcraft. It was something the family was deeply ashamed of. From time to time the calling would appear in a new generation but, of course, this was kept secret. It came to be thought of as some kind of family curse. My mother was appalled that a daughter of hers would revive it. I always felt that my mother favored my younger sister Juno and my brother Dan. Well, now she was provided an excuse for it."

"I gather you didn't desist from witchcraft, though."

"Goodness, no. I made a greater effort to keep my practice hidden. It taught me to be resourceful and independent." And distrustful, she thought.

Denis asked, "If your mother didn't want you to be a witch why did she send you to witch school?"

Mrs. Macready laughed. "It was a way to get me out of the way, out of the village, so that I wouldn't humiliate them by being caught doing witchcraft. She actually told the neighbors with a straight face that I was caught being truant and was sent to a reformatory school for girls. For incorrigibles like me, I suppose. They could distance themselves from me. They would leave me in the care of the sinister practitioners of black magic, my own kind, and I wouldn't contaminate the rest of the family.

"There was another reason too, now that I think of it." Mrs. Macready smiled. "I used to have a terrific crush on Gerald, my future husband, when I was thirteen and he was eighteen. I knew what I wanted in those days and I wasn't subtle about it." She laughed again, a laugh of genuine, slightly embarrassed, delight. "My mother saw me flirting with him one day. She nearly had a fit. She said she wouldn't have a daughter throwing herself at men like a trollop. So she sent me away. The idea was that if I was away from Gerald I wouldn't be tempted. And, of course, no one in the village would be scandalized by my behavior. That was another reason I found school so distasteful, at least at the beginning."

Mrs. Macready never thought that Gerald would still be available or even still residing in Granthorne by the time she graduated, after five years, but there he was, and he seemed to have changed so little. She had never had the courage to ask him whether he stayed in the village because of her. She knew he would tell her the truth. He was a habitual truth-teller. It was the gossip among the village girls at the time she left that Gerald had given a heart-shaped charm to Victoria Clark for her bracelet. She had certainly seen the bracelet on Victoria. In those days—those days that seemed so long past—people took such things seriously. Everyone knew everyone else in the village and it would have been easy to find out the truth, whether Victoria or another girl had left Gerald, or somehow disappointed him, but she never did. Her self-confidence petered out when it came to any comparison with the attractive girls that she knew. Even now it was not a subject she was keen to reminisce about. It was enough that Gerald was there. When she returned after graduation there was no time for timidity. She knew what she wanted. Everyone had a sense of urgency then as the young men were going off to the Great War. So they quickly became engaged.

"You husband isn't a witch, I mean a wizard, then? What sort of job does he do?"

"He sells hats."

Denis laughed. "I'm sorry. I find that odd."

"It certainly is. He hardly ever wears hats."

"No, I mean, there's you on the one hand, shooting at werewolves, and your husband is a hat salesman."

She wasn't paying attention to Denis's last remark. She was picturing Gerald as she liked to think of him: on the sidelines after a rugby game, hatless, hair disheveled in the scrums, shirt mud-bespattered, perhaps the top buttons undone and wisps of his reddish-brown chest hair sticking out. When she mentioned this image to her friend Patricia once, she was disgusted that Mrs. Macready liked chest hair. Well, there was no accounting for taste. Gerald hadn't played rugby in years now, even on the masters team, but the image was still vivid in her mind.

Mrs. Macready wondered why she allowed Denis to accompany her. She realized that the more memories Denis built up the greater effort it would require to erase them and the more likely it was that some fragments would remain. She grudgingly admitted that she enjoyed his company. It was also true, she argued to herself, that he had proven more than a little useful to this point.

"I suppose you've finished your education?" she asked coolly, as if it were only a conversation starter.

"Yes, I'm done. Or at least, I've had enough. My head seems crammed like a stuffed doll with rags. I can't imagine what use that knowledge could do me. Our education system seems designed to produce people like me, perfectly useless for anything practical."

"You've received your conscription letter, then?"

"Yes, this month, like millions of other poor fellows. To think, twenty years ago they could not imagine losing another generation of young men on the battlefield. Yet here we are, prepared to march into the fire."

"I keep telling my son, Ian, that he must take his future seriously. If he was accepted into an apprenticeship he would be granted a deferment. He doesn't show much interest in a formal education but he won't take up a trade either."

"How old is he?"

"Eighteen. Once the shooting starts, especially if there are heavy casualties, they'll drop the conscription age to eighteen in the bat of an eyelid. I don't suppose anyone thinks the war will be over in only two years." Denis nodded gloomily.

"The problem is," Mrs. Macready continued, "that Ian wouldn't find army life disagreeable. I'm sure his mates could talk him into enlisting within the first week of hostilities beginning. It would be a lark for him, a chance for some adventure." Maybe, she thought, a chance to get his mother out of his hair. She knew that he would make a good soldier. That only made her worry the more. They could ask him to crawl through a trench filled with icy water and he would have that sheepish grin and do it without hesitation, never mind catching pneumonia. Or parasites in the water. Did they have that in Britain, she wondered, or was it only in dirty water in those unhealthy tropical climates? She couldn't remember. If only Ian weren't so passive. He would end up with all the unpleasant duties, or even dangerous duties, that the other men would strive to avoid. He was too easy-going for his own good.

Gerald would be no help in discouraging their son. Whatever comforting words he said to her, she knew that Gerald and Ian would be allies in this. They were too much alike in some ways. Gerald would be tempted to enlist himself. She didn't know anyone for getting caught up in the first wave of enthusiasm as Gerald was.

Denis began his lament. "The whole experience will be inexpressibly wretched. There's basic training before we can even think of being shipped out. It'll be mud and waking up at dawn and cold showers. The sheer boredom of day after day of that will pound us into uncomplaining obedience. If only I could be lucky enough to fail the physical."

Denis had his speech interrupted by an unexpected whistle. The old man on the street ahead of them had turned to face them squarely. With a mischievous, mocking grin he pulled a wand out of the inside pocket of his shabby overcoat and with a practiced twirl he made his outlines grow hazy like heat shimmer in the distance. Then he shot straight up in the air like a firework.

"He was on to us the whole time," Denis exclaimed.

Denis and Mrs. Macready were beside the iron fence bordering a small park. The witch led them to a park bench. The bench's arms and legs were curls of cast iron. Flicking her wand she detached the bench from the concrete beneath. "Take a seat," she ordered.

"That wand is frightfully convenient for metalworking, don't you think?" Denis commented admiringly. He added, "It's rotten luck we can't use broomsticks, though."

"Broomsticks, fiddlesticks! Do you know how uncomfortable broomsticks are if you ride them for hours? They offer no lower back support at all."

"I suppose I've never really thought about it."

The park bench flew up into the air, surrounded by a similar cloaking spell to the one that the old man had used. Denis couldn't breathe with the rush of air. He grabbed hold of the armrest on his side with both hands and hung on with all his strength.

Denis scanned the indigo sky for any sign of their target, without much hope. The bench hovered and Denis recovered his breath. "I see him," Mrs. Macready muttered. Denis couldn't imagine how she managed this. He suspected that witches must have heightened sensory perception. The bench swooped forward like a bird of prey in pursuit. Mrs. Macready steered with her wand. Then Denis saw it too, a moving blur against the dark rooflines of the city.

Denis was better prepared for the acceleration this time. He squinted to keep his eyes open in the rush of cool air. It was like the rides his Uncle Jonathan had given him in his Bentley roadster when Denis was ten or so, out of the city and through the Surrey countryside. He wished for his goggles, and a wool scarf.

The flight was over almost as soon as Denis had adjusted to it. He had to admit to feeling a sense of disappointment. The old man came to the steep roof of a brick Victorian apartment building and alighted on the narrow widow's walk between the gable and the iron balustrade that encircled the roof. When he had gone in through a door Mrs. Macready motioned her wand to make the bench land on the roof. As it passed near the building the bench lost all speed and tumbled from the air, as if the engine had stalled on an airplane. Denis and Mrs. Macready were spilled from their seats. Denis shrieked. He saw the world tumbling around him as he had the sickening feeling of being a plaything to the force of gravity. Seconds later he felt his headlong plunge to the sidewalk arrested by an unseen force. He gently floated to the ground. Mrs. Macready, composed as ever, had brought their descent under control. The bench crashed on to a flower bed that skirted the building and obliterated some geraniums.

Although now on his feet, Denis was doubled over, gasping for breath.

"Anti-magic charms," noted Mrs. Macready. "The building is protected by powerful charms." Denis nodded, still trying to recover. She looked up the height of the building and saw the attic lights turn on.

"I suppose we can't get in, so I guess we have to call it a night," suggested Denis when he had calmed down.

After considering for some time, Mrs. Macready tried the double doors of the apartment lobby, knowing that they would be locked. But the doors opened. As Mrs. Macready and Denis entered the dimly lit lobby, the elevator doors opened and the thin old man stood before them, still in his shabby overcoat.

"I believe I am privileged to have an agent of the Bureau of Magical Enforcement as a guest. And I know of you. You are Mrs. Macready, unless I am mistaken."

Mrs. Macready nodded, trying not to show her surprise.

"I was apprised of your identity when I came into the building." He pointed out through the window to a metal tube mounted above the entrance doors. "It is a viewing scope of my own invention," he explained, looking at Denis. "It transmits images to a receiving screen in my home. By magical means, of course—no messy wires."

To Mrs. Macready he continued, "Call me sentimental but I felt you deserved some special treatment, instead of being turned away like any other Ministry agent. Let's not stand here. Come up to my rooms."


	6. Chapter 6

In silence they went up the lift to the eighth floor, the attic storey. Denis's gaze was fixed on the old man. He was bald with some strands of white hair combed over the top of his skull. He wore thick, round glasses. His fingernails, Denis couldn't help noticing, were yellowish, long and broken. They reminded him of the claws of a bird of prey. When the old man grinned he revealed teeth that were, predictably, yellow with noticeable gaps between them.

They were greeted at the entrance to the flat by a metallic barking. It sounded as if a dog was at the end of a tin horn. Behind the door they discovered a mechanical dog, barking and rearing on its hind legs to paw its master. "Magical automatons are something of a hobby of mine," the magician explained.

The inside of the old man's apartment was mostly one continuous space. A small portion of the flat was allotted to a kitchen and a dining area with a rickety old table and two unmatched chairs. All the rest was devoted to the old magician's study area and workroom. The high walls were lined with books. The shelves were so high as to require a wheeled ladder such as bookstores used. Drawings and manuscripts were pinned, askew, to the walls. The space was cluttered with machines, tall as a man, like free-standing metal sculptures. Bits of machinery lay strewn on the floor, along with tools, as if the magician had been interrupted in his work. It was like living inside an enormous, broken clock.

Mrs. Macready was reminded of Prof. Dee's office at Gladhearts. It was like a museum of the history of magic, crammed as it was with mysterious magical devices on antique brass pedestals. The walls were covered with books. Where there were openings, framed diagrams had been hung. Particularly rare or beautiful books lay on tables beneath glass covers. When she saw Prof. Dee's office as a child she felt that every worthwhile bit of knowledge in the world, at least everything wonderful, must be in his library and indexed in his filing cabinet. To this day, Dee's office was a picture of magical endeavor to her, an image of the beauty and clarity, and endless possibility, of rational thought revealing the universe.

"I must introduce myself. My name is Ludovico Bruno. Perhaps you have heard of me?"

"I believe I've heard the name. Some agents have been investigating your case." This was a considerable understatement on Mrs. Macready's part. Ludovico's file at the Bureau took up a cabinet. He had long been known as a heretical thinker, writer and researcher.

"They have been investigating me most of my life." He threw his hand up in a gesture suggesting it did not trouble him. "I keep the officials of the Ministry employed, do I not? They can make a life-long study of my activities." He chortled. "But you haven't heard my name from anyone else, eh? Never mind. Call me simply Ludovico. I will explain how I know of you. Please, sit." He pointed to a set of massive, well stuffed armchairs around a low table. Their upholstery was worn and faded.

Ludovico continued. "I invited you in because I know your name, Mrs. Macready. I remembered you were the student of my friend, Professor Erasmus Dee. Erasmus and I worked together in our research activities before his time teaching at Gladhearts Academy. "But there is some intelligence that we might profitably exchange with one another tonight. I assume that you followed me from the Underground station. I further assume that it was not a coincidence that you were there. Let me explain how I came to be at that station and I hope you will tell your side of the story."

Ludovico walked from his sitting area over into the midst of his machines. With a dramatic flourish he flung off a white cloth to reveal a curious contraption. It was a table with brass legs, a black surface of polished stone, and a brass arm that sprang out of the side of the table and arched over the center of the tabletop. At the end of the arm hung a pendulum bob on a thin wire. At the four corners of the tabletop were metallic gargoyles. Cast from a dark gray metal, the gargoyles had the appearance of shrunken and preserved old men. The tabletop and the arm were enclosed in a glass dome.

"They're ghastly," Denis whispered to Mrs. Macready, meaning the gargoyles.

"We refuse to work if we're going to be insulted," muttered one of the gargoyles in a harsh voice. Ludovico shushed him.

To Denis Ludovico said, "Forgive an old man his idiosyncrasies. I don't suppose my choice of decoration will appeal to everyone. I have a weakness for the Gothic era of art." Mrs. Macready took this to mean that the gargoyles and the other decorations in brass were not essential to the working of the machine. "I have long been working on the problem of other dimensions. I wish tonight to reveal the fruit of my long labors. This is the device I call the Distant Listener, or Listener for short. It was constructed to detect magical resonances from other worlds. In its essentials it is very simple. The Listener converts magical resonances into forces on the pendulum. The pendulum traces a pattern which we can study at leisure. The purpose of the glass dome is to block out all magical influences from our world. Allow me to demonstrate."

Ludovico carefully lifted the glass cover from the Listener and set it aside. Immediately the pendulum began to vibrate as if its wire was being shaken. Its motion was agitated but seemingly random. Ludovico lifted his wand. Its tip lit up in a simple illumination spell. The pendulum reacted by swinging smoothly back and forth across the tabletop. Everyone could see that it was describing a pattern. Its motions were visible on the table as a thin, glowing blue line. One of the marks around the edge of the table also glowed, pointing in the direction of Ludovico's wand. Finally, the gargoyles became animated, putting on a sort of mime performance indicating their interest in the pendulum's patterns.

Ludovico put away his wand. "Of course the Listener is isolated from mere mechanical disturbances: the settling of floorboards; a windstorm outside; a man sneezing in the next room. The great difficulty was in devising a detector sensitive enough to detect signals from other worlds but insulating it from all the magical noise of our own world. You cannot imagine the years of effort it took to find the right charms for the dome. At one time I was contemplating building the Listener in a railway tunnel under a mountain, or in a mine shaft!

"The Listener was completed many months ago. I have been recording its results ever since. They are disappointing. To a blunter critic they are worthless. The pendulum has moved, but so slightly, so briefly, that I cannot conclude they were not errors. The disturbances of the pendulum have been erratic and never repeated. They led nowhere.

"All that has changed! In the last two weeks there have been bursts of activity of such magnitude that they are proof not only of magic emanating from other worlds but of actual breaches in the barriers between worlds."

Ludovico continued. "These breaches are not natural phenomena. There are tell-tale signs of magical force being used to create these openings." Ludovico reached into his waistcoat and pulled out his golden compass. "This artifact which looks like a gold watch is in fact the newest version of my Listener. It is a small portable version, not nearly as accurate or sensitive as the tabletop one but useful for on-site investigation. This very night I used it to confirm to my satisfaction the existence of a gateway between worlds. I was alerted when another manifestation occurred tonight which the Listener detected. Fortunately, I was prepared to follow it to its source. Alas, I arrived to find the gateway already closed."

Denis leaned over to Mrs. Macready. "This sounds like where we came into the story."

"That's quite remarkable, Ludovico. I guess it's only fair that I tell you what I know of events at the Underground station." She proceeded to relate the events of the evening.

When she had spoken Ludovico paced excitedly back and forth. "These wolves, you say, came through the wall white with snow?"

"So I was told."

"They come from a world which has winter when we have spring. At least what passes for spring in Britain," Ludovico mused. The old wizard lapsed into a long, thoughtful silence. He can launch into a bout of theorizing at a moment's notice, Mrs. Macready thought, with a mix of admiration and amusement.

Finally, Ludovico resumed. "I hope that you will not mind an old man telling a long-winded story. I want to explain my interest in other worlds. This also concerns your old teacher Prof. Dee."


	7. Chapter 7

"Some forty years ago Prof. Dee already had the reputation of being the greatest wizard of his time. He was approached by a man with an extraordinary request for assistance. This man was a layman but like many Englishmen of that time he was fascinated by such magical knowledge as had filtered down into books accessible to laypeople. He had in his possession something that was possibly unique, a container full of dust from another world. Of course by 'another world' I don't mean another planet. Any such place could be reached if one travelled long enough. I mean another world that co-exists with ours and cannot be reached by ordinary physical means. The man claimed that the dust was handed down from the Atlantean civilization. This is almost surely nonsensical, but I have no better knowledge of the dust's origin.

"Upon doing research Prof. Dee discovered that there was a process whereby the dust could be incorporated into rings that would transport the wearer into other worlds. He fashioned the rings for this amateur magician. Prof. Dee naively gave up the rings with no further efforts to follow events, despite having misgivings about the man's trustworthiness and wisdom. The man had given Dee a false name and address, for one thing. But Dee wanted to deal with him fairly, without trickery. We never heard from him again. For all we know, he could have used the rings, gone to another dimension, and never come back. Without evidence of the existence of more dust we thought we were at a dead end. Not surprisingly, we forgot about the incident and our thoughts turned to other matters.

"It was some years later that Prof. Dee met a man who claimed to be one of the great figures in magical history, no one less than Nicholas Flamel."

"The discoverer of the Philosopher's Stone?" exclaimed Mrs. Macready. "But he must have been over four hundred years old!"

"Indeed. One of the properties of the Stone is to extend life indefinitely. Flamel passed on the secret of the Philosopher's Stone to Prof. Dee. I believe he did so slyly, counting on Dee's lack of expertise in alchemy. You remember, of course, that the Stone was created through alchemy, of which Flamel was the undisputed master. The secret would be protected and preserved but Flamel wouldn't have to worry about the proliferation of Stones, or Stones falling into the wrong hands, because it was unlikely Dee, or anyone else, could master the techniques of its creation. The Professor confided to me, after many attempts, his failure to follow Flamel's footsteps.

"A lesser man might have put Flamel's secret away, a hidden treasure, but we were much younger men in those days and we felt we had all the time in the world to attack the big problems of magical theory. Prof. Dee had the brilliant thought that if all correct magical systems were equivalent, as the Grand Unification Theory says, then it should be possible to replicate any result of alchemy through the manipulation of symbols alone. Thus, Dee set himself the possibly even more difficult task of finding a system of spells that would create the Philosopher's Stone."

Ludovico noticed that Denis was looking perplexed. "Not to worry. These strands will tie together." He continued with his story. "Dee tried for many years to produce the Philosopher's Stone but always fell short. He created spells that ran on to more than a hundred pages, spells of mind-boggling complexity, yet there was always something missing in them. Now, a lesser magician might have given up, or worked away fruitlessly for the rest of his life, but Dee was no ordinary magician. He remembered the Theory of Incompleteness of the medieval scholars. Briefly stated, it is that the system of symbols as mapped out in Lavoisier's Tree of Symbols, so familiar to generations of young witches and wizards, is incomplete. Because our system of magic is incomplete there are spells that are impossible to write. Dee thought this was the explanation for his failure to create the Philosopher's Stone. Systems of magic are different in different worlds, although there could be considerable overlap. Therefore, there are magical symbols and connections between symbols that exist in other worlds but not in ours. This was a theory that the Ministry has long suppressed. It is whispered that the books in which it was written were systematically sought out by agents of the Ministry and destroyed. Today, we do not know how far the ancient scholars went in their speculations; we only have second-hand accounts."

"There's a point I'm confused about," objected Mrs. Macready. "Suppose magic from other worlds doesn't work properly in ours, and our magic isn't effective in other worlds. Then the missing parts, they can't be—well, effective."

"Yes, you're quite right. They don't have the status of the known part of the Tree; they're ghostlike, is the term I have used. They can be completely ignored for all the everyday magic that we do. Yet for spells of great complexity and subtlety they are necessary. The consequences may be few but they are very significant, indeed. Think of all those 'unbreakable' security spells used to protect our greatest valuables, or to lock away our criminals. Are they really unbreakable, or are there overlooked flaws?

"Dee knew, of course, that the theory was heretical. It undermined centuries of Ministry teaching. He did nothing to communicate his speculations. Only I and a select company of theoretically-minded wizards ever heard about it. Yet the ideas leaked out beyond our circle and spread rapidly if furtively. Soon, Dee was hearing that he was a champion of Incompleteness. The Ministry was in a quandary. To take actions to suppress the theory was to draw attention to it. Eventually there was no choice. This is the world that our younger generation has grown up in, one in which it is forbidden to discuss, study, write about Incompleteness or the other world problem."

Denis spoke up. "I can't believe all this fuss over a bit of theory. Surely it can't be so dangerous to the Ministry."

"I'm afraid I could cite many historical precedents in your own culture for violence, bloodshed, imprisonment and so forth over 'a bit of theory', as you put it. I suppose it's a universal human tendency to attach emotional values to their ideas, however abstract. The Ministry has always identified with the Tree of Symbols. It is the symbol they rally around, the way an army rallies around their nation's flag. They have always stood behind the idea that there is only one system of magic and it is complete and perfect. I could explain further but I will trust Mrs. Macready to satisfy your curiosity, or I will be speaking until dawn."

Mrs. Macready felt the tingle of an old memory run through her. She had read brief mentions of the Incompletists in the books she studied in the distant, dusty recesses of the school library. One day she decided to bring the matter up in her History of Magic class, but the teacher would not answer her questions. "Go to Prof. Dee," she said, "and see if he will tell you about them." Fine, she thought, and immediately stood up and walked out of the classroom, to the astonishment of the teacher and the other pupils.

The empty stone corridors of Gladhearts during class time had never seemed emptier, Mrs. Macready recalled. She found herself hurrying along, her heels clicking on the stones and echoing. Up two flights of wide wooden stairs with banisters polished by centuries of children, and it was a short corridor to the entrance of Prof. Dee's office, in one of Gladhearts' towers. The entrance at that time was like an intricate wooden puzzle, with pieces that folded out of the way to permit passage, once the password was uttered. All the children knew the password. It was 'licorice'.

Prof. Dee offered her a pickle from a small dish in his hand. "How may I help you?"

"Could you explain the Theory of Incompleteness to me? Prof. Austin, my History of Magic teacher won't."

"Ah, young lady, there's a reason we don't want to teach the Theory of Incompleteness. The theory is a speculation. If you want to make progress and do some really useful magic your education must be based on what is tried and true. Naturally, your mind is curious. This is a wonderful quality, but I advise you to concentrate on knowing the Tree thoroughly. It will unlock the universe to you."

It was a disappointing answer but she had accepted it at the time and did not raise the issue again. She remembered how she and the other students had idolized Prof. Dee. His example had fired her with ambition to become a scholar of magic. He never spoke condescendingly to the students. He was always honest and helpful. But she realized now how unsatisfactory and frustrating his answer was for the pursuit of genuine scholarship.

Ludovico's voice brought her back to the present. "Now, Mrs. Macready, you understand why I have made you an audience to this? I need your help. I am an old man and there is only so much I can accomplish by myself."

"What about the Professor himself?" she asked, but she could guess what the answer would be.

"Prof. Dee never had the nerve to be a revolutionary. He long ago turned his back on research in controversial areas. He is often called upon as a consultant to the Ministry. I suppose they pay him well for his time. He is honored and respected. There is even talk of him becoming Minister of Magic. Naturally, he does not communicate with an outcast and fugitive like myself."

Mrs. Macready asked, "But why me? I can't believe it was because I was a student of Prof. Dee's all those years ago, when I was a child."

"He often spoke of you as one of his most promising students. Did you know that? He was profoundly disappointed when you dropped out of magic altogether. He was delighted, of course, when he heard that you had joined the Bureau, but even then he thought you had too much talent for, may I say, routine enforcement work."

It gave Mrs. Macready a glow after all those years to hear that Dee had thought so highly of her. She really had had no idea. However she had a natural tendency to resist being persuaded. "Was that intended as flattery?"

"Every word was the truth. I know you are sworn to uphold the decrees of the Ministry, but you do not need to abandon your duties. We have common purpose. We need to find the rings that Dee fashioned. Only you, with the resources of the Bureau behind you, can do it. I have never known where to begin on a trail that is nearly forty years cold. Whoever obtains the rings can personally enter other worlds, not only proving their existence but gaining the opportunity to develop a more complete system of magic than what we now possess. That person stands to gain great power.

"Well, I have planted the seed of thought in your mind. I hope you will give it long and serious consideration."

"Why do you suppose I won't arrest you now? You've told me enough to have you put away for unlawful research and public communication."

"You and I are birds of a feather, as they say. You have a higher calling than your obligations to work. I am convinced that you would not try to arrest me."

Ludovico was right; she did not feel any inclination to arrest him. For some reason, her instinct was to let matters be. Was this because she saw him as Prof. Dee's former research partner? Perhaps she understood that he, personally, was no threat to the Ministry, and had no interest at all in affairs of power. Then there was the mystery of the rings and of the wolves and the gateway between worlds. Perhaps they would need to be awkward allies after all.

He finally turned around and confronted her. "But if you choose to, I will not go without a struggle. I think you would be well advised to seek reinforcements." For the first time there was an undercurrent of menace to his speech. Mrs. Macready felt a surge of adrenaline. Her heart jumped. Momentarily she felt as if she was challenged and she itched to reach for her wand; but she let the moment pass and did nothing.

Ludovico continued. "I must ask you and your friend to leave now. Don't think that I would be so obliging as to wait here for you to bring back your colleagues from the Bureau. I bid you adieu." Mrs. Macready suspected that the old wizard had some tricks up his sleeve. After all, she reasoned, he had spent many years as a fugitive. He would not give up his freedom easily and he had the power and the cunning to evade the Bureau's best efforts. She bid Ludovico goodnight and led Denis out the door.

Mrs. Macready told Denis that there was one item of business she had to attend to before she went home for the night. "I have to wipe our your memory," she said.

"No, no! You must be joking! After all that I've heard. You want to deprive me of my story?"

Before Denis could object further she tapped him lightly on the temple with her wand. He immediately looked confused and disoriented. She held onto him lightly by the arm and steered him to the sidewalk where she hailed a cab. In his dazed state he barely noticed when she removed the notebook from his pocket.


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's note: Sorry this took so long to get up. I'm happy that people made it through the last chapter, with all its explanation. I suppose it wouldn't seem like so much explanation if the story were longer. _

* * *

Dunleavy waved the day's newspaper. "A fine night's work, Mrs. Macready," he said half-jocularly. "Here we have headlines of wolves rampaging through the capital's subway system. Panic among an already nerve-wracked populace, and all that."

Disregarding Dunleavy's needling, she asked, "Did Athanasius come up with anything new?"

"No, and what's more, he never found the bodies of the wolves that you claimed to have killed."

"What about the live ones?"

"Disappeared. Apparently gone from the Underground."

That fell in with her expectations. Once they were found out the wolves would need a new base of operations.

"Now, listen to this," Dunleavy said, with a more serious tone. He was reading the newspaper. "There were reports of wolves running down the streets, in Highbury. 'Police are uncertain if there is any connection between the sightings and the break-in of a house on Drayton Road.' Now, what would you make of that?"

"That's the first we've heard of them outside the tube stations. Highbury is miles north of the stations. Let me have the address of that house; I must get there."

He passed it to her. "If they're going to howl on the streets I suppose they have to expect to attract some sort of public attention," Dunleavy reasoned. When he looked up, though, Mrs. Macready had already muttered an 'excuse me' and was heading out of his office.

331 Drayton Road was a narrow Victorian rowhouse. It was still a handsome house of brown brick but to Mrs. Macready it had a neglected, unlived-in look. The lawn had been trimmed but there was no garden, no ornaments, or toys lying scattered. But Mrs. Macready already knew that the owner, Professor Digory Kirke, did not usually reside in this house. Once she had the address and the contact information from the police she phoned him at his country house in Lincolnshire and arranged to meet him that afternoon.

The older gentleman answering the doorbell was dressed comfortably but neatly in a cardigan. His whitening hair was getting long and tousled. "Please come in Mrs. Macready. I'm afraid the house isn't in a fit condition to receive visitors, and I haven't had a chance to prepare anything."

"Prof. Kirke, I'm pleased to meet you. There's no need to apologize. I'm not here on a social call."

"Yes, I have been wondering what the purpose of your visit was." Behind his glasses his eyes appeared puzzled, even a little suspicious.

Mrs. Macready was not inclined to soothe anyone's feelings once she was plunged into action. She stepped into the house. The extent of the damage nearly took her breath away. Every item of furniture had been tossed about. Empty drawers were strewn everywhere. Cushions and upholstery were ripped open, and clumps of stuffing lay thick on the living room rug. A kitchen window had been smashed and shards of glass lay on the counter. Mrs. Macready guessed that this is where the ransackers had broken in.

"Is it like this throughout the house?"

The Professor nodded. "Fortunately, I keep few possessions here. There was nothing worth stealing and not much to slow down their search. I'm thinking that it doesn't seem much like a routine burglary. It has a frenzied aspect to it." Prof. Kirke observed Mrs. Macready carefully.

"They were looking for something, though. Would you have any idea what it was?" She was examining the house, barely looking at the Professor.

"Mrs. Macready, I don't mean to be impolite, but I notice that you still haven't told me why you are here."

"You could think of me as a private investigator. I'm not the police; I'll make that clear. I'm not with the insurance company either. I work for an organization that's, well, unrecognized by your law. You wouldn't have heard of it, I'm sure."

"A very mysterious organization, it would seem."

"Did you know that wolves were seen on your street last night? Only a few blocks from here."

"Wolves? In Highbury? That's quite outlandish. No, I hadn't heard. I only arrived an hour ago and I haven't been reading the newspapers or listening to the radio. The police told me the house had been ransacked; they didn't mention anything about wolves. Are you sure there's a connection?"

"There aren't any claw marks on the furniture or the floors. There are no unusual hairs. They took human form in the house." Mrs. Macready looked sternly at Digory Kirke. "Professor, you are in danger. These wolves, or whatever they are, want something that they think is in this house. They won't stop at killing you to get it.

"I believe that each of us is harboring secrets from the other. What say you to sharing our secrets? Perhaps we will find that they are pieces of the complete puzzle. As the one intruding on your house, let me start."

"I'll make some tea. This may take a while."

When they were seated and drinking from mugs that had survived the rampage, Mrs. Macready began. "I am a witch. I work for an organization that it something of a government for witches."

As she talked, Mrs. Macready noticed that the Professor had little difficulty accepting what she told him. She repeated much of what she had told Denis. She recounted the events of the previous day and why the appearance of wolves from another world was more important to the witching community than the wolves themselves.

The Professor seemed to be searching his memory for elusive thoughts. He was silent for some moments. "I will tell you how it all began. It started when I met a girl, Polly Plummer, in a summer long gone." He told the story of how he and Polly accidentally broke in on his Uncle Andrew who was experimenting with rings of green and gold. Uncle Andrew sent Polly off the face of the earth with a green ring and Digory had to follow with another green ring, taking gold rings with him to bring her back. It amused the Professor to learn that his uncle had never fashioned the rings himself. The Professor told how he and Polly found the dead world of Charn and summoned back to life the Queen of Charn. She came back with them to the earth and threatened to conquer it. He had to devise a way of taking her to another world. That was how they discovered the world known as Narnia. Prof. Kirke did not know how much of the story of Narnia was relevant to Mrs. Macready but he did tell her that it was foretold that the Queen would one day rule over Narnia as the White Witch.

"I think I know what those wolves want," Prof. Kirke said. "They are servants of the White Witch. They have been sent to this world knowing the name 'Digory Kirke' and this address. They seek the rings. I am sure of it." Seated in this modest, ordinary house in north London Mrs. Macready shivered as if she could feel a chill wind blowing from Narnia on her back.

"It's a puzzle to me," Mrs. Macready mused, "why the White Witch would want the rings. If she could send the wolves here she has found a way to force a passage between the worlds. Perhaps she has made rings of her own."

"Yes, of course, I see it now. In her long years of studying magic the White Witch learned how to make the rings and there was something from this world that would serve as the dust—she could have used a bit of the lamp post she took from outside in the street."

"Then why would she want your rings?"

"Perhaps she does not want the rings to use herself but rather to destroy them to prevent anyone of this world using them to reach Narnia." The Professor's thoughts drifted off. "It has been a long time since I have thought of Narnia. It has not entered my thoughts for many years. Polly sends me Christmas cards and photographs of her children. I see her from time to time but I think of her as an adult, not as my companion to Narnia." The Professor looked up with alarm. "You don't think she could be in danger, do you? The White Witch never paid much attention to her."

"Don't worry. I'll contact my office and they'll send someone to watch over her."

"I have never returned since I was a witness to the morning of its creation. Polly always told me that she had the sense it was an adventure open only to children. Now I am old and not fit for adventures. Yet I feel that I still have a role to play in this. Despite everything I feel a sense of excitement.

"Now, let us get to the yard. The rings must still be where I buried them!"


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's note: Sorry to disappoint anyone that more wasn't done with Prof. Kirke. One reason is that he figures in the other Narnia prequel I wrote. The other reason is that it would confuse the issues facing Mrs. Macready._

* * *

It was not difficult to find the spot where Kirke had buried the rings. It was beside the stump of a chopped down cherry tree in the center of the yard.

"I had enough foresight to put them in a porcelain box," the Professor explained as he cut through the thick turf with a pick. "There's a story about the cherry tree you might find interesting. I'll have to tell you some time." He rolled back a rectangular patch of turf to expose bare dirt. The soil was fragrant and damp. On the second spade thrust Kirke stopped part way through. "I guess children don't bury things very deeply," he said, smiling. He switched to a hand spade and cleared the dirt off the tiny white box. He remembered that Polly had sacrificed the box; she had used it for trinkets once. The porcelain looked unchanged but a small metal clasp had turned to bright orange rust. It crumbled away as he opened the box. There, inside, were two gold rings and two green rings, gleaming as brightly as the day he had placed them in the box.

"Don't touch them," Kirke warned. "They react instantly to contact with skin."

Kirke was surprised at the anxious look on Mrs. Macready's face. "Is there anything wrong?"

"Let's hurry and get inside the house."

Kirke closed the box, put it in his pocket and scrambled for the door. Mrs. Macready closed it behind them. Looking out the window she could see nothing amiss in the yard.

"What are you afraid of, the wolves?"

Before Mrs. Macready could answer, the front doorbell rang. Kirke looked at Mrs. Macready. She stepped swiftly to one side of the front door and held her wand ready. "Go ahead, open it."

Prof. Kirke imagined all manner of strange beings that could be on the other side of the door, and having seen the population of Narnia he could imagine a great deal indeed. He was not prepared for what he saw though. It was a young man in a conservative gray suit.

"Denis!" Mrs. Macready sputtered. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, naturally, I'm following up on my story. What did you think?"

"But your memory was wiped clean. I saw you entering that cab not knowing what decade you were in."

"Oh, that. Well, to put it briefly, I went to my editor's office this morning. He asked me what I had been doing. Of course, my mind went blank. He reminded me of the assignment he had given me. I went back to the Underground station and walked all around until I came to that illusory door. Then I remembered it wasn't real and I stepped through. Going through the passageways I found my camera, believe it or not. When I had the pictures developed it all started coming back to me. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details, though. If I had my notebook I'm sure I could remember the rest but I seem to have lost it. "

Mrs. Macready looked at him with a short flash of suspicion. She thought the memory-cleansing spell had taken better than that. The doubts couldn't be sustained, though; her intuitions could detect no trace of dishonesty. Denis continued. "Finding this place wasn't difficult. I read the newspaper story and came to the neighborhood to interview the residents."

Mrs. Macready was surprised to feel a sense of relief. She had to acknowledge that she felt guilty for wiping out his memory when that could have set him back at his job. She was in his debt for his timely assistance on more than one occasion back in the Underground.

"There's a frightful lot that you still haven't explained. What about all that theoretical mumbo-jumbo that Ludovico was going on about? I daresay half of it went right over my head."

Mrs. Macready sighed. "I promise to give you a lesson in the theory of magic, but I don't think we have time right now."

To the Professor, Denis remarked, "She was explaining to me yesterday how even in the supernatural world there's this massive bureaucracy. How very English!"

"I think I should object to the word 'supernatural'," said Mrs. Macready, drawn into the discussion despite herself. "Witches don't regard magic as supernatural; they regard it as perfectly natural. Laypeople shouldn't categorize everything they don't understand as supernatural. It's all one world. As I say, I'll have to explain it to you some other time."

"Look at the back door!" exclaimed the Professor from the kitchen. An intense light, too bright to be natural, was seeping in through the cracks around the door. Mrs. Macready pulled out her wand and countered the spell. The door was bathed in a purple glow as it was locked in the struggle between the opposing spells. They could see it shake in its frame.

"Duck!" cried Mrs. Macready. Denis scuttled into the bathroom. Prof. Kirke lay flat on the kitchen floor. Mrs. Macready sheltered behind an armchair. With no further warning the door exploded into splinters.

Through the open doorway they could see in the rear yard three men in long maroon robes. Their faces were shadowed by their cowls. They had evidently entered the yard through the gate to the back lane.

"Goodness gracious," Denis exclaimed. "Are we being attacked by members of a religious order?"

"Not quite," answered Mrs. Macready. "They're the Brotherhood of the Enlightened, a secret society of wizards. We've long suspected them of wanting to overthrow the Ministry."

Between the Brothers, wolves came streaming through the yard towards the house. Mrs. Macready was prepared this time and did not point her wand at them as wizards instinctively would. She scanned the room for potential weapons. She flicked open the kitchen utensils drawer. Knives and forks leapt into the air and and organized themselves like a miniature squadron of fighter planes flying in formation. At the same time they were heating up. The kitchen utensils hurtled through the doorway and streamed toward the wolves. They stuck themselves on to the wolves like blood-sucking insects. The fur of the wolves was singed and smoking. The wolves howled and yelped as they twisted and spun in a frenzy trying to shake the missiles off.

The Brothers advanced, wands raised. As far as Denis could tell, all pretence of magical subtlety or cleverness was forgotten. The Brothers and Mrs. Macready blasted away, sending bolts of blinding colored light at one another. There seemed to be small explosions all around Denis, as if he was inside a fireworks display. He covered his ears as bangs and cracks and shrill whistles filled the air. The Professor dove for cover under the kitchen table. An energy bolt hit a chair and it burst into flames. Another was deflected and struck a cupboard door, shattering it and sending down a cascade of dishes to the floor.

One Brother made it to the doorway. Mrs. Macready fired a spell at him but he seemed to block it. Almost at the same time, though, Mrs. Macready waved her left hand and the wand was knocked out of the Brother's hand to clatter on the kitchen floor. The Professor pounced on it. Picking it up, he broke it in two over his thigh. The Brother made an angry gesture with his bare hand and the Professor felt himself being flung off his feet to land with his back against the sofa.

"Professor!" cried Mrs. Macready anxiously.

"Don't worry about me," the Professor replied breathlessly. "Soft landing. Nothing damaged."

Denis emerged from a closet brandishing a cricket bat. He did not hesitate to charge the disarmed wizard and swing the bat at the wizard's head. The wizard ducked and dove for Denis's legs. The two were soon tangled with one another on the floor.

"I didn't know I still had that bat," the Professor remarked to himself.

Mrs. Macready was surprised that Denis was so eager to join the fray.

Another Brother was at the doorway. "We know you have the rings. Hand them over." It was a voice that sounded dimly familiar to Mrs. Macready but she didn't have time to think of that now. She rolled out from behind the armchair and aimed her wand at the garden hose behind him. The hose slithered forward faster than any snake and wrapped itself around the wizard's torso. With his arms pinned at his sides he could not use his wand. She tied a knot in the hose and knocked him out of the way so she could see the third attacker.

The third Brother took in the situation and didn't fancy his chances in a duel against the witch. He levitated his companions out of the house and over the backyard wall, like pulling toy soldiers out of a mock battle and placing them back in the toy chest.

The wolves, though many were suffering from burns, had regrouped on the lawn. Mrs. Macready didn't fancy another round of hostilities. There was also the possibility the Brotherhood would return, bringing reinforcements. She set the lawn on fire, sending the wolves beating a retreat through the open yard door.

"Come along. Out of the house." She rounded up Denis and Prof. Kirke and led them through the front door. "I don't think the wolves will give up. They'll come around the corner. Oh, and Professor, I'm sorry about the state of your house."

Prof. Kirke shrugged, taking it much more placidly than Mrs. Macready would have imagined. "It's only a house."

The witch levitated the two men down the block, out of reach of the wolves. Then she levitated herself to join them. It was less elegant than flying on a broomstick but acceptable for short hops.

"I thought I saw a cab coming this way," Denis reported. "When we were in the air, I mean."

"Wonderful," said Mrs. Macready. Thank goodness for the ever reliable London taxi, she thought.


	10. Chapter 10

On the taxi ride from the Professor's house they talked of magic. Mrs. Macready muttered, "I wish I could pull Ludovico out of my pocket. That man could give a lecture at the drop of a hat. This is more in his line."

However, she did her best. "The universe as witches know it is a union of energy, matter and idea. Everything has its own resonance. This is what witches with Witch's Sight can see. When symbols are brought together, as in a spell, they create a pattern of resonances. The interaction between this and the resonances of objects causes magical events to happen. You see, your physics is fine in dealing with the interactions of energy and matter, but it leaves out thought, thought as encapsulated in words and visual symbols.

"There is a basic vocabulary of words in spells. The words can also be represented by visual symbols. There really aren't all that many of them, about two hundred. They aren't English words, of course. Witches don't actually have to say them aloud; it is enough to think them clearly. You might think that two hundred symbols wouldn't get you very far in creating complex effects, but one of the wonderful things about magic spells is that a spell can be represented by a single symbol which can then, in turn, be incorporated into other spells. In this way you can create complex and powerful spells. Spells, of course, also need names and other ways to refer to specific objects."

"That's marvelous," said Denis a little dubiously. "But when you explain it, magic sounds like algebra. It's all so cut-and-dried. The mystery, the fantasy, seems to be gone from it."

"Well, I apologize on behalf of the universe, then," replied Mrs. Macready curtly. She knew Denis had a point though. Performing magic daily was mundane and practical, like putting the tea kettle on the stove in the morning. Was this a legacy of her education at Gladhearts? There she had so much rote knowledge jammed into her brain, so many exams to write, that she was forced into taking a practical view of magic.

Mrs. Macready recalled with sudden vividness the girl named Livia who was in her first year class at Gladhearts. Livia had the Sight to a strong degree. She told then twelve-year-old Mrs. Macready that she could see ghostly shimmering images around objects. Her family thought she was unusually sensitive to nature and landscape because she could sit for hours looking at a brook or a garden but what she saw was the ceaseless play of auras around living creatures and plants. Even more fascinating was the interaction between auras. She saw these as patterns of light, like three-dimensional ripples in space. She told Mrs. Macready that she could sometimes hear the patterns, almost like music. She discovered that saying words of magic was like plunging your hand into a pond and observing the ripples. Hearing her filled Mrs. Macready with a feeling of awe, and the awareness of mysterious powers in the universe. What had happened to Livia? With a pang of guilt Mrs. Macready realized that she had lost track of the girl in their later years at Gladhearts. Had she finished school at all? Like any child who was different from her peers she was the target of ridicule and shunned.

Perhaps Gladhearts was no different from other schools but in Mrs. Macready's mind it was especially guilty of fostering conformity. Mrs. Macready remembered that she and her closest friends were also considered outsiders or eccentrics and treated with suspicion by professors and students.

Mrs. Macready was set to continue. "Now, you've probably wondered where the energy for magical events comes from. After all, there has to be a source of energy for every action, magical or not. Magic harnesses energy that--."

"I believe I've heard enough theory for now," Denis remarked. "In my experience this sort of stuff is always followed by a set of problems requiring calculus."

Young people, Mrs. Macready thought. Would they ever amount to anything?

"But what was that Ludovico said about you dropping out of magic? I find that hard to believe."

"That's what I did. Shortly after the birth of Ian, Gerald asked me to be an ordinary housewife and a mother. It wasn't possible to practice magic regularly then. I happily gave it up and had no regrets. I wasn't being asked to give up magic entirely; I knew I would go back to it at the right time."

It was strange, she thought. You would think that these transitions in life would be more dramatic, that there would be more emotion expended on them, but for her that wasn't the case. She felt confident that it was a step in the right direction. Just as quietly and as surely, when Ian did not need to be watched over, she had decided it was time to return to a career in magic. There was only a little anxiety felt on both occasions but she was surprised how quickly she had settled in. The main problem, as she recalled, was having to buy a new wardrobe.

"I still find it hard to believe," Denis said, shaking his head, "after all those years of schooling."

"People do crazy things for love, don't they?" Mrs. Macready laughed.

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," Denis grumbled.

"Oh, ho. Having problems with your love life, is that it?"

"I don't think this is a good time to talk about my love life."

"It's always a good time, Denis. Wouldn't you agree, Professor?"

"Umm, yes."

"Well, if you must know, I just came back from a weekend in the country visiting a very dear girl who I happen to be in love with. It was a total fiasco. Lydia, that's her name, treated me like a child, instead of as a, a—."

"Lover."

"Well, yes. She doesn't take me seriously at all. I would try to engage her in a conversation about meaningful things, like Socialism and the struggle for labor reform, but she kept going off on tangents, about frivolous things, like—."

"Like what?"

"Like aviation. Yes, you see, her father is acquainted with the French aviator Gaston Lamouroux and he dropped in during the weekend. Well, you can imagine he only had eyes for Lydia and she had no time for me after that. He monopolized every dance with her! Not that I can dance, but—."

"Denis, we could listen to you all afternoon but I'm afraid we've arrived at the Professor's hotel." Prof. Kirke thought he had better stay at a hotel for the night as his house was not really fit for habitation. That is, if it hadn't burned down.

"I'll have a crew of magicians sent from the Ministry to fix the mess," Mrs. Macready promised him.

"Young man," the Professor pronounced, stepping out of the taxi, "I strongly suggest to you that you not waste your life pursuing a romance that is not meant for you. Open your eyes. Perhaps you've been overlooking a love that's been near at hand for some time."

"Now what did he mean by that?" Denis asked himself.

To Mrs. Macready the Professor said, "I think I'll go down to Lincolnshire and spend some time in my house there until my neighbors calm down. They must be alarmed by all the ruckus they've been hearing the last couple of days. Not to mention the fire on the lawn."

"The wolves should realize, if they've been talking to the Brotherhood, that we'll be taking the rings to the Ministry so you won't be in danger any longer."

"I think it best that your people guard the rings or even destroy them. I never wanted to see them used again. I realize that this might fall in with what the White Witch was scheming but I cannot see a wiser course of action at present." The Professor waved farewell to them.

By the time Denis and Mrs. Macready stepped out of the cab the sidewalks were flooded with office workers leaving work. The street was lined with brown brick office buildings. They came to an unremarkable building with the name "South Island Import Export Company" painted on the glass of its front doors.

"We could go through one of the staff entrances, but I thought I would show you the public entrance," Mrs. Macready explained. Inside the tiny, drab lobby were some chairs, an ashtray on a metal pedestal, an umbrella stand, some neglected plants in pots, and a directory on the wall. They passed this without comment and waited for the elevator. "There really is a South Island Import Export Co." said Mrs. Macready. "We even have a warehouse in the dock lands."

Inside the elevator Mrs. Macready waved her hand over the row of well-worn metal buttons for the various floors. Joining the buttons for Basement, Main and Floors One through Eight was a button Denis hadn't observed before, labeled with an unknown symbol. This button seemed to glow as if there was a source of light behind it. He was not surprised when the witch pressed that button. The elevator seemed to drop for a long time.

"Why are you showing me this?" Denis asked. "Are you going to wipe out my memory again?"

"No, that wouldn't be practical. The human mind can take only so much memory manipulation. No, I think you've earned our confidence."

When the elevator doors opened they revealed a scene surreal in its contrast to the shabby office building above ground. They were at one end of an enormous hall, with ceilings high as a church nave, filled with light despite its underground location. Columns massive as tree trunks, cut from some dark green stone veined with white, ostensibly supported the ceiling. The ceiling was a dazzling white, decorated with gilded reliefs of plaster. As the centerpiece of the hall was a fountain with marble statues of mythological figures gamboling amidst the gentle plash of waters.

Everywhere, there was to be seen the familiar Tree of Symbols, whether embroidered on silk banners that hung from the columns; incised in stone; or inlaid in gold. It showed ten circles connected by short lines. On some of the more elaborate diagrams the names of the ten circles were given. Denis couldn't help noticing that the tree was displeasingly asymmetric, as if there was a section missing.

"They are certainly keen on that tree," marveled Denis. "I saw them on the ties of those men back at the Underground station, I mean the men working for your Bureau."

"It's the diagram that Ludovico and I talked about," said Mrs. Macready. "We call it the Tree of Symbols, or Lavoisier's Tree, after the discoverer. The circles represent the Major Symbols, sometimes called the Higher Symbols. When I was a student the textbooks would associate the Higher Symbols with things like virtues—you know, Loyalty, Compassion, Faith, Courage, and so forth. They even tried pretending that the Symbols were like luminous beings available to help us in our need."

"They personified the abstract."

"And there have always been scholars who had obscure theories of how the Symbols were related to one another, and deeper meanings behind them--."

"But you don't think much of that?"

"It's the sort of nonsense that gives magic a bad name. When I was in school and I was surrounded by people who believed in the Ministry version of things, or at least acted as if they did, it was easy enough to go along."

"Then what do the symbols really mean?"

"You remember I mentioned the symbols or words that are used in spells? That make up the magical vocabulary? Well, they naturally form clusters that have similarities with one another and are interrelated, so each of these clusters belongs with one of the Higher Symbols. The Higher Symbols have no direct use in magic. To me, the Symbols and the Tree are just a way of organizing our magical knowledge. They depict the way the universe works. As to their deeper meaning, if they have one, I'm sure I don't know, and no one else does either."

On this floor were wide reception counters and security desks. Denis realized that amongst themselves, witches and wizards dressed in robes, much like those of the Brotherhood of the Enlightened, but the Ministry employees did not wear a uniform color or style. A security guard waved his wand desultorily over Mrs. Macready and motioned for them to continue through.

"You magical folk are certainly keen on secret societies."

"Yes, and on the Continent that is how nations have traditionally been governed. The chief political leaders are initiated into secret societies where they meet the leading wizards of the nation. Between them they work out all the key policies. Parliaments, congresses, cabinets—those are only so much window dressing."

At the end of the hall was a bank of elevators with gleaming brass machinery and clear glass shafts. The height of the entrance hall was such that the elevators could be seen stopping at other floors and discharging their occupants.

"So what do you think?" Mrs. Macready asked.

"It's all very magnificent. It reminds me of the palace of some Renaissance pope, one of those corrupt ones who amassed a fortune and knew how to spend it."

"Yes. It always reminds me how much the Ministry has to lose if its power is undermined."

"You're thinking of the Brotherhood of the Enlightened?"

"Yes, they would be delighted to have the rings as proof of the Ministry's deceptions and cover-ups. I'm sure they've supported Ludovico's work in the past and helped shelter him from the Ministry."

Mrs. Macready wondered how the Brotherhood had found Prof. Kirke's house. Had Dunleavy told them? How did they join up with the wolves? She couldn't see an answer.

Mrs. Macready left Denis in the waiting area and descended to her office.

Back in Dunleavy's office Mrs. Macready handed the porcelain box over to her superior. He handled it with painstaking care, opening it more slowly than he needed to, as if he were savoring a moment of triumph. Mrs. Macready was watching him closely. He had a certain avaricious gleam in his eye, the way that an alcoholic stares at a shot of whiskey. Dunleavy perhaps noticed the attention he was drawing from Mrs. Macready and quickly snapped the lid shut. "Very fine work, Mrs. Macready, very fine."

"You'll be taking it to the Deputy Minister's office?"

"Yes, certainly. All in due time." Dunleavy opened a drawer of his desk, placed the box in and locked the drawer.

Mrs. Macready did not find this last sentence very reassuring.


	11. Chapter 11

_Author's note: If you don't like the theory of magic being used in this story, not to worry, I doubt I'll use it again. (However, anyone who wants to borrow it is free to do so.) I'm reacting to the magic in Harry Potter, which has always seemed to me like what you'd find in the after-Halloween discount bins in your local mall._

* * *

"We're not going to try that wretched tailing-the-suspect business again, are we?" complained Denis. "It didn't work very well last time." Mrs. Macready had already explained the Dunleavy situation to him.

There had also been no choice but to share her doubts with Athanasius. She would rather not have involved him in this but she might need the help of his men. Feeding the old man's suspicions was like tossing logs on to a fire. If Dunleavy's expression on seeing the rings was alarming it was as nothing compared to the way Athananius's eyes had ignited with passionate hatred. The old man's frame had convulsed into life, trembling with excitement. Mrs. Macready could only look on with something like horror and awe. Athanasius would authorize a raid on the Brotherhood's lodge. That the Brotherhood was involved in the skirmish over the rings was justification enough to satisfy their superiors.

Beyond using them as a propaganda tool against the Ministry Mrs. Macready couldn't begin to speculate what the Brotherhood would do if they got their hands on the rings. Some among them would surely try to seize them for personal power. Under the circumstances Mrs. Macready did not want to take that chance.

"No, we'll leave it to the experts. Athanasius's agents will follow him."

"Why did you drag me up to the roof, then?"

"Dunleavy would normally leave work about this time. If we spot him I thought, well, we might just hover usefully in the area." Mrs. Macready smiled hopefully. She pulled a metal baton from under her coat. Engraved on it in very fine lines were rows of symbols, like a text.

"What's that?" asked Denis skeptically.

"I thought you wanted to ride a broomstick."

"That's hardly a broomstick."

"Well, not literally, but it'll do." The tube telescoped out to form a rod about the length of a broomstick. "We must make way for modern times."

"So all that writing on it, that's the spell that makes it work?"

"Yes, laypeople tend to think that magical objects are intrinsically magical but, in reality, they are either enchanted by having a spell cast at them, or the magic that controls how they work must be written on them. Anything as complicated as a flying broomstick must, of course, be written."

"Look, isn't that him now?" Denis pointed to the figure of Dunleavy hurrying from the South Island Import Export building. A taxi was waiting for him on the curb.

"That didn't take long."

Dunleavy must have been afraid she would circulate news of the discovery of the rings. That would have forced his hand either way. If he was loyal to the Ministry he would want his superiors to have the rings under their control to prevent rumors about them from spreading. If he was a traitor he knew that his superiors would soon come knocking at his office door.

Denis straddled the metal rod awkwardly and they were soon aloft. They didn't have to fly very fast; the taxi was caught up in the evening traffic. Denis thought he would be all right as long as he didn't linger on the fact that he was sitting on a thin rod with his legs dangling above the rooftops of the city. He was gripping the rod behind his seat with both hands as firmly as he could. He was afraid his hands would soon be numb.

"You know," said Mrs. Macready helpfully, "there's no need to worry so much. The rod adjusts to shifts in your weight. It's designed to prevent you from falling off."

Denis said nothing but continued to hang on grimly.

After flying for some fifteen minutes, Mrs. Macready remarked, "It seems I was right about Dunleavy, or, I suppose, Athanasius was right. It appears Dunleavy's going to the Lamplighters' Lodge."

"Lamplighters, did you say? Who or what are Lamplighters?"

"The Loyal Order of Lamplighters is a long established and secret organization. Not of wizards, of laypeople. I suppose at one time they lit the lamps in the city. I'm sure they perform many laudable services to society. They raise money for children's hospitals, that sort of thing."

"You mean harmless old codgers with their secret handshakes and initiation ceremonies and that sort of thing. What do they have to do with this?"

"Ah, you see, it's well known to the Ministry that they act as a front for the Brotherhood."

"Oh, so they're a secret society that acts as a front for another secret society." Denis shook his head skeptically. "If it's so well known why don't your agents raid the place, round up the old codgers and make them spill their secrets? Then you'll be done with your opposition in no time."

Mrs. Macready laughed. "Most of the old codgers wouldn't have a clue what the Brotherhood is. We have, in fact, raided the Brotherhood, but they don't leave their conspiracy plans, if any, on desktops or in filing cabinets. As far as anyone could tell, their activities are aimed purely at education and research." But did the failure of those raids have anything to do with Dunleavy, Mrs. Macready now wondered.

Denis was grateful for the conversation which distracted him from his precarious position atop the rod.

They soon caught sight of the black rectangle of the taxi stopping momentarily and Dunleavy getting off and entering a building. They descended to the sidewalk.

"Well," announced Denis beaming, "I survived that."

"Congratulations," said Mrs. Macready, not entirely with sincerity. She waved her wand over Denis from head to feet. Then she did the same for herself. From Denis's point of view she was immediately transformed into a prosperous looking businessman in a black suit wearing a bowler. "There, that might help. Have a look at yourself in a window."

Denis saw that he looked the part of a likely colleague of Mrs. Macready's character. He found it a little unnerving to notice that he had not changed appearance very much but only looked older, with gray whiskers.

"It's only an illusion," Mrs. Macready reminded him. "Don't count on it fooling Dunleavy. We need to stay out of his sight as much as possible."

"What about the Bureau agents? Isn't this their job?" Denis inquired, with a note of anxiety.

Mrs. Macready carefully scanned the street. "I don't know. They're not here, at least, not yet."

Denis was astonished to discover that the building Dunleavy had stepped into was a pub, the_ Three Phoenixes_. "I thought you said he was going to this Lamplighters' Lodge?"

"It's on the corner, half a block away." She pointed and Denis could make out the tall white classical columns of an imposing structure at the end of the block.

The _Three Phoenixes_ reminded Mrs. Macready of the dozens of taverns she had seen Gerald visit in their years together. They wound their way past the booths paneled in dark stained wood, careful not to bump into patrons, some a little unsteady on their feet, and ducking the round trays laden with mugs and glasses carried by the barmaids.

They took seats at the bar to better observe Dunleavy. The supervisor ordered a pint and sat down at a booth to drink.

"Perhaps he just wants a drink after work?" Denis suggested.

Mrs. Macready shrugged. "Almost anything is possible. He might suspect he's being watched and this is just to make us think we're wasting our time. Or he might be meeting someone here to hand off the rings." They ordered drinks so as not to attract attention.

Gerald drank too much when he was younger. It seemed to develop naturally from all the time he spent with his rugby teammates. In the early years she had nagged him incessantly but it did no good—it was a regular theme among their friends to tease Gerald on being nagged about everything. More often she would be exasperated at the effort of nagging and sit in stony silence when she accompanied him. She didn't suppose it made any difference. Thinking back, she thought she might have overdone it. She thought of over-indulging in alcohol as a moral weakness. That was a pattern of thought she was sure she had received from her parents. Whatever resentment he felt never boiled over into much. Looking at it coldly and practically she had to admit that his habit never developed into much of a problem. He was sober when it mattered. He had gotten into the odd fracas from time to time but he was too genuinely peaceable minded for these scrapes to become mean or vicious. She wished he had more concern about his health, though. He was developing something of a belly. (She, on the other hand, had a very trim figure, if she was to say so herself.) To be sure, it didn't show much through his clothes. He always had the same wide shouldered, barrel-chested build. She imagined she must have been the envy of many women. Now she was happy to find excuses to leave him alone, trusting his friends to keep an eye on him. In recent years the drinking had moderated. Four years ago he had left behind friends he had known since Ian was a toddler to move with her to London and her new career. He no longer had as many occasions to drink.

Thinking of the move always gave her a twinge of guilt. Had she asked too much of a sacrifice of him? He never complained about living in the city. He always had amusing anecdotes to tell of his colleagues at Huxley and Sons Hats and the customers he met on his sales route through the southwest counties. Even though he had spent some fifteen years in the market town of Plimley he was a village lad at heart and must have secretly longed to go back. That was why he was so quick to jump at the sales job for the hat makers; it allowed him to spend his working days driving through the countryside, stopping where he wanted.

When Dunleavy had finished about half of his beer he got out of the booth. "Must be going to the lavatory," Denis whispered.

After some minutes Mrs. Macready suddenly sat up at attention. Dunleavy had not returned to his seat. To Denis she said, "You'd better have a look in there."

"Me? You're a man, too. I mean, you look like a man, too."

Mrs. Macready had actually forgotten her illusion. She didn't want to let on, though, so she maintained a stern expression. Denis went into the men's lavatory.

"He's not there," Denis reported.

"What? How is that possible?" Mrs. Macready fairly shrieked. Some heads turned, wondering where the shrill voice came from.

Denis shrugged helplessly. She could sound witchy enough when she wanted to, he thought.

The two of them went together. Mrs. Macready paused in the space before the doors. There were doors to the kitchen and a storeroom on one side and doors to the men's and ladies' rooms on the other. She stood for a moment to consider. Then she waved her hand over a blank wall. For an instant Denis had a vision of a door, with lines of mysterious symbols carved on it. Then this view faded and Denis was left with the everyday appearance of the hallway again. The door was invisible to all the thousands of patrons who had passed by, year after year, on the way to the men's or ladies' rooms.

"Did Dunleavy create this door to give us the slip?" Denis asked.

"Not likely, I think. This door looks old. The Brotherhood may have created a secret door leading to their meeting place long ago. Someone must have told Dunleavy about it. He would never want to be seen going there publicly if there was an alternative."

Mrs. Macready turned the knob on the door and motioned Denis to follow. The door opened to a short set of wooden stairs going down to a long straight passageway completely lined in stone blocks of an antique appearance. Denis and Mrs. Macready stepped down. As she closed the door behind them a light glowed at the end of her wand. She ended the illusion spells to save her powers for what lay ahead. They walked forward into the dark.


	12. Chapter 12

The silence in the underground corridor was quickly growing oppressive, even for Mrs. Macready who was used to keeping her own company. As an excuse for talking she thought she might further Denis's education in the history of witchcraft. "The lodge must date back to the days of the great witch persecutions. I don't mean the present building that you see on the street, I mean the location. If it's long been a gathering place for witches and wizards then it must have secret entrances and hidden chambers. That would explain this passage."

"The witch persecutions you mention, they're the ones in the history books, right?" Denis offered hopefully.

"That's the one part of witch history that you should be aware of."

"Yes," said Denis uncomfortably, "but I always assumed they were innocent old women who were burned at the stake."

The passage turned right, then immediately left again. Mrs. Macready thought it wouldn't be surprising if the route to the Lamplighters' Lodge not only had a secret entrance but was also designed to lead astray those outsiders who did manage to get in. She scanned the stone walls for hidden doors but here she did not find any. They continued on.

"There were many innocent people swept up in the tide of hysteria of that time. The public wanted scapegoats, the fanatics saw danger everywhere. Many that confessed under torture had no involvement in witchcraft at all. Others were Cunning Folk, practitioners of the Old Magic. They were inheritors of folk beliefs passed by word of mouth from generation to generation. They were fortune-tellers and advisors on various matters of country life, from which pig should be sold to when a marriage should take place. They provided remedies for illness and stirred up love potions. Some had no magical talent at all, others were real witches that had no training."

"That sounds pretty harmless. But what about witches of your kind?"

"On the other hand, we, the learned scholars of the esoteric arts, were seldom threatened. Oh, of course, we hid away our activities and our paraphernalia. But few of my predecessors were arrested. Those who were accused defended themselves as scholars and scientists.

"You have to understand that my predecessors, the founders of the Ministry of Magic, were rich and powerful men. They were nobles or had the protection of nobles. Some had influence over the Royal Court and the reigning monarch himself or herself. You might not believe me if I told you that they encouraged the witch hunt. They fed the fires of anti-witch hatred."

"How could they do such a thing?" Denis was genuinely appalled.

"The Cunning Folk were mostly rural people. They had little in common with the men of property who formed the Ministry. They were loyal to their local leaders, those who taught them their magic or performed it with them. The Ministry could not gain their allegiance. To consolidate power they had to destroy them, and what better way than through the civil authorities?"

"That's close to cold-blooded murder," Denis muttered.

"Make no mistake. The Ministry is built on foundations of blood and ashes." As soon as the words came out Mrs. Macready realized that she had never put it in such a blunt and cynical way before. She immediately felt a need to soften her statement. "That was a long time ago, you realize. I'm sure if you dig through the history of any organization you'd find episodes they wouldn't be very proud of." For some reason she couldn't raise her voice and she knew she didn't sound very convincing.

In the unchanging gloom Mrs. Macready's thoughts soon drifted back to Gerald. Of course she had been a positive influence on her husband's life. She didn't know why she had doubts about that. Gerald was always easily influenced by his friends. He needed her to give him some backbone. Goodness know what his life would have been like without her—aimless mucking about until he suddenly hit middle age, no doubt. Oh, he had to put up with the gentle ribbing of their friends about having a domineering wife. She knew of course when she had pushed too far and he felt genuine resentment.

If Gerald didn't share her sense of moral propriety he more than made up for it with a sort of positive goodness that expressed itself in action. She felt a thrill of pride to think of it. She remembered the time when Gerald, without a car at the time, had carried old Mrs. Newcombe through the streets to her doctor's house after she had had some sort of seizure. She was thinking of whose telephone she could use to call the doctor when Gerald simply lifted the woman off the curb and walked off with her. Mrs. Macready realized she was moralizing and judgmental, and not terribly tolerant, whereas her husband acted instinctively. At those times he would never explain his thinking to her.

There was a loud crack. At their feet the floor of the passageway fell open like a trap door. Denis teetered on the edge of the opening until Mrs. Macready shot out her arm to pull him back by his jacket. Standing more securely at the edge, Denis peered down into the pit below but could not quite make out what awaited him in its dark depths. "Thank you," he managed to murmur.

Mrs. Macready levitated the two of them over the opening. Landing on his feet, Denis hesitated a moment but glancing back at the determined face of the witch he decided he better step forward, only more slowly. Mrs. Macready kept a watch for any spells written on the stones of the walls or floors. She could also probe for any irregularities in the material which might indicate a mechanical trap.

Both she and Denis were thoroughly disoriented by the turns in the passage. She was convinced, though, that they had walked a much greater distance than they would have in a straight line between the pub and the lodge.

Denis heard a soft humming before he knew what the sound belonged to. Then he saw metal balls flying around the corner, like the working end of a medieval mace, with sharp spikes protruding in all directions. "Look out!" he cried and ducked as one whizzed by where his head had been. He would never have had the chance to dodge another two that came at his legs. Mrs. Macready immobilized them with her wand, leaving them hovering in mid-air, like stymied hornets. Another two she deflected with a wave of her left hand, sending them crashing against the wall where they threw off sparks before skittering on the floor and coming to a stop. The one that had missed Denis's head turned around and came back. There was nothing Mrs. Macready could do but dive to the floor to avoid it while trying to maintain her control over the other four. Denis took off his jacket. When the ball made another attack he somehow managed to dive in front of it and catch it with his jacket. The force was enough to knock him over as if he was tackling a rampaging rugby player. Mrs. Macready changed her spell and the suspended mace heads ceased their constant humming and crashed to the floor, apparently lifeless. Mrs. Macready was surprised that the mace balls could so easily have their internal workings disabled.

"That was quick thinking, Denis. I hope you're not hurt."

"No, only bruises, I think." He brushed himself off and they continued forward. "I'd like to get to the end of this obstacle course sooner rather than later. These endless underground corridors are starting to make me feel claustrophobic."

Suddenly, as they were walking, the light at the end of the wand went out and they were in complete darkness. "It's all right," said Mrs. Macready in a calm voice. "No need to panic."

"What is it?"

"I saw something incised on the wall just before the light went out. I think it must be an anti-magic charm, like the ones at Ludovico's apartment building."

"But that leaves us completely helpless! What if those infernal metal balls come back at us? Or something worse?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say completely helpless." She couldn't help but be pleased by the progress Denis had made. She deserved to take some credit. "We're both still able-bodied. I don't suppose you have an electric torch with you, or matches?"

"If I had, don't you think I would have mentioned it by now? Wait, I have an idea."

Mrs. Macready was delighted to have Denis's participation. She heard him walking and then crawling on his hands and knees back the direction they had come.

"Do you suppose," Denis asked, "you could hum something, or sing, so I don't lose my sense of direction?" Mrs. Macready started to hum _La donna e mobile. _It was an aria Gerald often sang when he went on walks in the park, often to the surprise of their neighbors.

Denis came back quickly. "Now, where do you think that inscription of the spell is?"

Mrs. Macready worked her hands along the walls until she found it. "It's lightly chiseled into the stone here. It's a fairly long spell; it takes up, oh, three feet going across and two feet vertically, but it's coarse rock."

"All the better," announced Denis with relish. He had gathered one of the mace heads and proceeded to smash it against the stone. "Sometimes the simple approach is best, and we can forget all that learning."

Mrs. Macready smiled. The idea worked very effectively. The stone crumbled and once many of the words became unintelligible the spell ceased to work.

They went around two more turnings in the corridor. With everything looking so much the same they were losing their sense of time as well as direction. It was obvious they were being led on a highly circuitous path, perhaps in completely the wrong direction. Mrs. Macready wondered if she had missed something, a hidden passage, a fake section of wall, an opening in the floor or the ceiling. They could only hope that she had not made some dreadful mistake and the passage would eventually take them to the Lamplighters' Lodge. There was nothing to do but to plod forward.

Neither spoke much now. The darkness seemed to stifle any notion of easy conversation. Perhaps Denis had become accustomed to the witch's silences. Mrs. Macready was thinking that there had to be vents to the surface or the air down here would become unbreathable, but the passage had been constructed so that no light filtered down.

Denis stopped in his tracks. On the floor he could see the reflection of a dancing green light. He was puzzling over what this could mean when into the corridor ahead of them slithered a massive snake with a body thick as a sewer pipe. Its body looked like it was made of glass in which a green light glowed and scintillated with a living pulse. With every movement the body gave off flashes of green flame. The head reared up. Dark gleaming eyes stared at Denis. Around its head was a hood of scaly skin like the circular halo of saints in medieval illuminations. Green fire seemed to pour out of the serpent's body and engulf it without consuming it. It opened its jaws to reveal shining fangs long as steak knives. Denis could imagine that the jaws would open wide enough to swallow his body whole. The worst thing to Denis was that the snake emitted a terrible sound like a screeching roar that bounced madly between the stone walls. Denis clapped his hands to his ears in anguish but this scarcely helped. He was seized with fear. It was as if the sound had engulfed his body like a flood. It penetrated through his body, dissolved his body, leaving only the fear.

Mrs. Macready put a hand on Denis's shoulder. "Denis, steady on. I'm sure it's only an illusion."

Denis could barely hear her but her presence brought him back to reality. "An illusion?" The beast looked like nothing real, but then there was the flaming head, and the eyes, and the din.

"In the center of its body, see that black patch. It's like a heart. Jump for it and grab it!"

Denis turned to Mrs. Macready with wide eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. Go!"

Denis blotted out everything of the serpent and focused only on the black shape at its center. He thought of nothing except his belief in the witch's certainty. He set off at a sprint towards the serpent, making a quavering sound that might have been a primitive war cry. He dove into the green fire until he was immersed in it. There was no heat, no sensation at all. He closed both hands around the black object. Rolling on to the floor he felt the object smooth and round like a polished stone in his hands. It took him a couple of seconds to look up and realize that there was no snake, no flames and no sound.

Mrs. Macready stood over him. "There's no snake, real or magical. There isn't even a magician casting the spell of a snake. There's only this device, generating the illusion of a fiery creature." Denis sat dumbfounded on the stone floor. He no longer had any interest in the magical artifact. It was doubtless much like the metal mace heads or Ludovico's mechanical dog. Mrs. Macready, seeing him dazed and speechless, patted him reassuringly on the back and offered him a hand to get back on his feet.

"I think I understand now," Mrs. Macready concluded. "The obstacles that we've faced were not intended as defenses to kill us. They were intended as challenges to test us. Of course, if we had failed we would have had an unpleasant fate."

With Denis still feeling numb and having nothing to say, Mrs. Macready continued. "Our presence in these corridors is surely well announced by now. Let me shine a little more light down here." They had come to what appeared to be a straight section of corridor. The wand threw out a powerful beam of light. At the end of the passage was a staircase up. They were both surprised how relieved they were to have reached the end. Their steps were quick and lively as they found renewed energy.

There was a trapdoor in the ceiling above the stairs. Mrs. Macready extinguished her wand light and lifted the door. It was a darkened room. Denis climbed up behind her.

"Our uninvited visitors have arrived," a man's deep voice said. Wands were pointed at the heads of Denis and Mrs. Macready. Two men in the familiar maroon garb of the Brotherhood had been waiting for them. Their faces were hidden by silvery masks. "You are to come with us."


	13. Chapter 13

It took Denis and Mrs. Macready some minutes to adjust to being above ground again. The plush comfort of the interior of the Lamplighters' Lodge was quite a contrast to the dungeon-like ambience of the underground corridors. The two Brothers escorting the pair cast a cloaking spell over them as they passed through the hallways of the lodge. "I don't know why they would bother," muttered Denis. "Those Lamplighters look like they wouldn't notice anything short of a bomb going off in the building." The Lamplighters were mostly older gentlemen, reclining deeply in leather armchairs, drinking Scotch and soda, or reading newspapers. Denis and Mrs. Macready passed a billiards rooms and a dining hall. "This is such a perfect replica of a gentleman's club, down to the last brass humidor, that I have the distinct feeling of being inside a film set," remarked Denis.

At the end of a long hallway double doors were flung open. Bright white light dazzled their eyes. Denis entered through the doors and gasped. The interior of the lodge had not prepared him for this. He and Mrs. Macready stood on a platform on the wall of a vast white sphere, at a point on its equator. The walls, or Denis supposed, more correctly, the single wall, seemed to be translucent and lit from the exterior. There were amorphous shadows passing over the white surface but no clear patterns. Far below were tiers of seats, as in a lecture hall. Denis could not tell what supported them.

On the platform, and bolted to it, were two upholstered seats. Denis and Mrs. Macready sat down. Immediately the platform began to descend and move forward as well, in a graceful curve. Looking behind Denis could see that the platform was not, in fact, floating on air but was supported by a slender mechanical arm that appeared to be made of polished brass, like the articulated arm of a desk lamp. Their seats found their place below the other tiers.

Steadily the sphere was darkening. It was difficult to avoid thinking of it as a sky. Lights like stars appeared and brightened. Lines of light on the surface of the sphere soon connected them. Denis gathered that these were constellations but he could not recognize them. As if to help him, glowing images of mythological figures appeared, superimposed on the constellations. Even Denis, who cared not a whit for horoscopes, could identify the zodiac signs. The sphere darkened to the appearance of a night sky. The stars even twinkled. Denis became aware that the entire majestic firmament seemed to be rotating.

"I expect," Mrs. Macready whispered to him, "that everything that you see here is powered by magical energy and controlled by elaborate spells."

"This is all rather impressive."

"It's intended to make a point. This chamber represents the universe as a grand celestial clockwork, a rational, orderly cosmos explained by--."

"— by science."

"I was going to say, by magic."

A procession of figures in the robes of the Brotherhood entered the sphere through a door near the base. As they filed in, each picked up a handful of what appeared to be gray powder from a metal dish on a pedestal. Passing a tall metal brazier they each threw in the powder, producing a flash of dazzlingly colored light in the brazier's flame. One by one they took their seats. As the sections of seats filled they would lift up the walls of the sphere until they found their correct position.

Two men entered the sphere. When they stepped on to a platform it glided across the sphere so that it was positioned like a stage across from the tiers of seats. Mrs. Macready guessed that one of the men, the one in the robe marked with distinctive symbols, was the Grandmaster of the Brotherhood. The other had to be Dunleavy, his face obscured by his mask. The Grandmaster addressed the Brotherhood. "Brothers, you have been called here on short notice. We will dispense with our rituals today as we have special guests. One of them is a visitor from the Bureau of Magical Enforcement." There was whispered discussion among the Brothers at this. For a moment a light fell on Mrs. Macready who continued to sit impassively. "She has passed through our secret underground entrance and therefore shown herself an adept at magic. Brother Dunleavy will vouch for her courage and steadfastness. She would make a sterling addition to our Brotherhood. There will be time to discuss that later. For now she is granted the honor of being admitted into our meeting chamber, and nothing that will be discussed here will be hidden from her. Her companion, too, though a layman, will be welcome as our guest tonight.

"Brother Dunleavy, who has been among us for many years, wishes to address the assembly." He indicated the man beside him.

The leader of the Brotherhood threw back his hood and removed his mask, as did Dunleavy. The others followed his example. They removed their masks and dropped their cloaks, folding them neatly, and stashed them in their desks. Under the cloaks the Brothers were dressed conservatively, in suit and tie. Denis was disappointed to think that to an outsider it would look as if he had broken into a bankers' convention.

The chamber now reminded Mrs. Macready of the lecture halls at Gladhearts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She thought of the old desks, scarred by knife cuts and ink stains going back generations. It was always cold in those rooms. Someone must have thought that children learned better when they were uncomfortable. She had tried to take notes with one hand holding her cloak tight, the other holding the pen and trying to keep the paper from slipping.

She remembered her first year as a lonely time. She had started a year late. She took some classes with the first years, one with the second years, and had to take private tutoring to catch up to children of her age group. Neither group fully accepted her. Eventually she fell into the company of other outsiders. Like her, they came from families that didn't encourage magic. There was dear Dorothea. How could she have made it through those years without Dorothea's cleverness and humor? She remembered how her classmate could do dead on impressions of their professors. Now Dorothea was in the Ministry's Taxation Department. Wasn't that odd? They must get together soon.

Heather Tompkins of the Cultural Office was the other girl she spent so much time with in school. They would sit in the corners of the library, seemingly for hours, giggling and disturbing the students trying to study. What had been so hilarious? All Mrs. Macready could remember now was that they had nasty remarks to make about the royal families of Europe. Heather was accounted the prettiest girl in their year. Her flouncy blond curls and fair complexion were objects of near universal admiration. She used to endlessly recite the sentimental romantic poetry popular among young women of that era. Funny that Heather had married that layman, Alan—wasn't that his name? Mrs. Macready had bumped into the two of them once, and Heather made it clear that they were not to discuss magical matters at all in his company. Mrs. Macready sighed. How painful and embarrassing for her. Mrs. Macready wondered if the romantic-minded witches she knew in school were satisfied with who they ended up with. That is, if they married at all. Did they get stuffy, dry men with no imagination for magic? Men who only cared about money or office politics?

She and Gerald didn't have much in common, at least not on the surface, but Gerald was so easy-going and they could always sort out their difficulties. Her own childish infatuation, thinking of him so often when they were apart, seemed such a long time ago. These days, she felt she took his steady presence for granted sometimes.

"Brothers," Dunleavy began, "I reveal myself as a member of this esteemed and ancient brotherhood tonight before my colleague, Mrs. Macready, and therefore to the rest of the world, because we have reached a critical hour. I have here in my hand the means whereby we will bring about the fall of the Ministry of Magic. I have here proof that there are endless worlds beyond our own, and magic in any number of them. Incompleteness is triumphant!"

"Traitor!" came a roar, as doors were flung open. "That will be enough from you!" The figure of Athanasius Kutcher was in the doorway where Mrs. Macready and Denis had entered, his white face accented by black robes. Before anyone could react, a flash of light exploded off his wand, flew across the room and struck Dunleavy full in the chest. Dunleavy was knocked off his feet.

"Drop your wands!" Athanasius shouted. He levitated himself down to Dunleavy's platform. Filling the doorway behind him were Bureau agents. All the doors to the sphere were opened and agents filled all of the openings.

Mrs. Macready levitated herself to land on the platform at Dunleavy's side. Her supervisor was unconscious, his mouth open. She could barely feel his pulse on his neck. "This man needs medical attention!" she cried, but both agents and Brothers were too shocked at the turn of events to make a move.

Athanasius pulled the white box from Dunleavy's hand. He flicked open the lid and dashed the contents to the floor of the platform. He held the tip of his wand just above the rings. Blue flames surrounded them. In a moment there were two popping sounds and puffs of green smoke spurted off the floor, quickly dispersing. There was nothing left of the rings but molten discs of gold on the floor. Mrs. Macready guessed that they were no more than metal now; their magical properties had been destroyed.

"Athanasius Kutcher!" she declared in a sharp, penetrating voice. "I arrest you for the murder of Eliphas Dunleavy!" She left the still body of Dunleavy on the floor and rose to her feet. All eyes were fixed on her. Her expression was uncompromising.

For an instant it appeared Athanasius would break into a laugh but the impulse stopped. For another instant he seemed bewildered. Then he gathered himself and declared, "I will not regret for an instant killing a traitor to the Ministry. I have devoted my life fighting to destroy the evil forces that threaten the Ministry. This is my greatest triumph."

"How can you talk about traitors to the Ministry? You, who organized your own renegade cell within the Bureau for years, serving no one's command except your own. Those men dressed as Brothers who attacked us at Prof. Kirke's house were your agents. I finally recalled one of their voices. The Brotherhood never had anything to do with the rings. It was an effort on your part to cast guilt on the Brotherhood and justify the raid."

Kutcher did not bother to deny any of this. "They laugh in the faces of the Ministry because we are impotent to stamp out their never-ending conspiracies. They are like worms forever burrowing beneath our feet. The Brotherhood works to topple all the beliefs we hold dear. The Ministry has passed down to us an image of the world that has inspired men's hearts through the centuries. Must we allow the Brotherhood to tear it down and drag it in the mud?"

Mrs. Macready didn't want to argue magic with Athanasius. She knew she had to appeal to the agents. "Shall I tell everyone where your crusade has led you? To form an alliance with forces from outside our world. The werewolves of the White Witch were on your men's side at Kirke's house. Dunleavy told me that you claimed not to have found the bodies of the wolves that I killed. That's quite impossible. The only explanation is that you met the wolves in the tunnels. They explained that their mission was to destroy the rings or take them back to the White Witch. You saw that you had common purpose with them. You returned the bodies of their fallen to them because you knew that anything brought from another world could be used to make dust for new rings. You have transgressed the commitment all of us in the Bureau have made to protect society from magical powers. The safety of our world has been compromised because of your obsession with destroying the Brotherhood."

"There are those in the Ministry, who I cannot name, who have known and approved of all our activities."

Mrs. Macready paused to consider. "These men and women you've brought with you, they may be loyal to your cause. They may find a way to stop me and cover up this entire incident. Or they may remember that they have sworn oaths, not to you, but to the Ministry. I don't want to argue politics or magical theory. I stand here accusing you of cold blooded murder of one of your colleagues and fellow human beings. As for your unnamed supporters in the Ministry, are you so convinced that they would stand behind you? That they would put their reputations, their power, their careers on the line to protect you?"

Athanasius stared at her. He seemed to squint as if to see her more clearly. The corners of his mouth twitched just perceptibly, then stretched into a grin. "I will not be brought to a courtroom, for solicitors to argue about, and juries to debate."

Mrs. Macready blasted Athanasius's wand from his hand, so that it clattered on the floor like a harmless stick. But Athanasisus did not hesitate for a second. He clapped his palm on his chest. A blue light covered his body and he crumpled to the ground lifeless.

The sphere was soon cleared. The Bureau agents might have been shocked and disturbed but they carried out their duties efficiently. They led the Brotherhood out and secured the building. Mrs. Macready assumed the Brothers would be questioned but would be released for lack of any evidence of wrongdoing. Denis and Mrs. Macready were left sitting alone.

Mrs. Macready said, "I wouldn't be surprised if his claim that the Ministry supported his activities was true. The Ministry makes the laws and then finds it convenient to break them. I suppose we'll never see evidence of that clandestine approval. I'm sure all those records will be destroyed. There'll be an inquiry, of course, but I don't expect much will come of it."

"I suppose that ends the matter," said Denis wearily.

"You'll have a good deal of work writing all this up for your newspaper."

"You know, I don't think that would be such a good idea. It would take a small book to explain everything, and no one would believe it even if I could get it published."

"So you'll keep silent. That sounds like your best idea yet."

"I must say," Denis began awkwardly, "that I've rather enjoyed this adventure of ours. I didn't think I would."

"You've done awfully well."

"Yes." Denis grinned in embarrassment. "I suppose I should make it through basic training. You know, I was hoping to join the Air Force. 'Knights of the Air' and all that sort of thing. But I've changed my mind. If there's going to be a war, and I don't doubt it, I want to see the real war. I want to be with the infantry. Maybe I'll see something worth writing about."

Mrs. Macready sighed. She couldn't help thinking of Ian. So Denis wanted to be on the front lines, to be ground up by tanks and artillery. It was too grim to talk about. "You're not quite as you seem from first impressions. I thought of you as spoiled and privileged. I imagined that you used to be the sort of boy who cried at birthday parties when he didn't receive a pony."

"Yes, well." Denis looked uncomfortable. Others had told him much the same thing over the years, often using unkinder words. "I did cry when I wasn't invited to a birthday party once."

"And what about Lydia?"

"Lydia," Denis murmured, as if hearing a name from the distant past. But then he didn't know what to say about her.

"Write to me when you have a chance."

"I will. I promise to send you a letter from France." As Denis walked away he turned and said, "There's one more question I'd like to ask. You've never told me your first name. On your desk it only says, 'Mrs. Macready'."

"I don't really like my given name. My father had the idea of naming all his children after pagan gods and goddesses." She grinned awkwardly. "It's Venus."

Denis found this funny. Mrs. Macready thought of mentioning that her husband didn't think her first name was inappropriate. When they were first engaged, he was shocked by how passionate she was. She didn't have much patience for the rituals of courtship of that era. He was flattered by it, of course.

Through the colonnaded entrance to the London Lodge of the Loyal Order of Lamplighters the Bureau agents were dispersing. Mrs. Macready noticed a young agent standing on the sidewalk looking at her. He smiled slyly at her and walked around the corner. Mrs. Macready was curious enough to follow. As the man turned to enter the lane he tossed his black wool coat into a trash bin. Then Mrs. Macready understood. She was content to look on from a distance as the man undressed from his human clothes and emerged covered only in his natural gray fur. The wolf turned its head for one last backward glance before loping off.

Mrs. Macready understood that he would report back on the destruction of the rings. The wolves would return to Narnia in triumphant success. That was the way of wolves, she thought: they could always be counted on to be loyal to the leader of the pack.


	14. Chapter 14

Weeks passed. The rings were destroyed; the wolves had apparently vanished and not returned. Only Ludovico remained missing. Ludovico was the last part of the case still not accounted for. Not expecting to find anything she could understand, Mrs. Macready chose to have another look at Ludovico's flat.

Why did she persist in pursuing this? she wondered. The status quo had been defended. Yet it was all so disturbingly unsatisfactory. She had to admit that once the thought of new worlds was planted in her mind it lingered and would not go away. It was not so much that she wanted herself to go to new worlds; it was enough that they existed to be discovered, that gateways could open up for exploration. She had a longing for something new and marvelous. Ludovico's work brought back that feeling she had as a child and had largely forgotten, that sense of the vast possibilities in magic. Neither school nor work had smothered it entirely.

The apartment building's anti-magic charms had been removed by the Bureau. There was nothing to stop Mrs. Macready from entering Ludovico's studio and pacing by herself along the length of the floor. The space seemed quieter and emptier than she remembered it but that was no doubt her imagination. There were no signs that Ludovico had lived here recently. Clothes seemed to be missing from the wardrobe and books had been taken from the shelves—the gaps were plain to see—but that could have happened at any time. There was no food in the refrigerator and nothing recent in the cupboards. Whether any smaller gadgets had been taken she could not be guess. Mrs. Macready walked between the draped forms of the machines sitting inert on the wooden floor. For some reason she found it distressing. It seemed that Ludovico's long studies had come to this: incomplete machines gathering dust.

In the midst of her melancholy ruminations Mrs. Macready noticed a faint bluish glow from under a white sheet. It was the Listener. Feeling a stirring of excitement, she pulled off the sheet. On the table's surface were glowing lines of bright peacock blue. It was impossible that the agents had missed these earlier but if they had see them they would surely have taken the machine back to the Bureau for examination.

Mrs. Macready lit her wand.

"Put out the light. It's bothering my eyes."

Mrs. Macready started. Then she guessed that the voice belonged to one of the gargoyles at the corners.

"I didn't know you were, um, awake."

"At least that appallingly rude layman isn't with you this time."

"No chance of that. He's with his regiment. Will you tell me what these lines mean?"

"They show that someone has left this earthly dimension and returned to it."

"Where?"

"Here. The residence of our master."

"It was your master, then?"

"The lines do not tell that, but yes, we were witnesses."

Mrs. Macready was going to suggest that Ludovico had been hiding in another world but then thought 'hiding' was not the most complimentary of words. "How is that even possible?"

"That you must ask our master. We can assure you that he has been busy with his comings and goings between worlds."

"Why didn't any of the other agents see these lines?"

"They were meant to be seen by you."

"If he wanted to deliver a message the old wizard could have used the telephone," Mrs. Macready muttered to herself. "Or written a letter, or sent a telegram. He must have been pretty sure that I would come back here."

For weeks following, Mrs. Macready consulted with the Listener. It was not wise to go too often; she did not want to attract attention. It made no difference; there were no further signs of Ludovico's movements. No exciting new cases came to Mrs. Macready. She was occupied with desk work. She had come to the point of wondering if she might never see further traces of Ludovico.

One day the mail delivered a small package to her house. The address was written in ink, in a crabbed scrawl, like an old man's penmanship. That was enough to stimulate Mrs. Macready's curiosity. Inside was a silver pocket watch. The front cover would not open. The knobs did not turn. Mrs. Macready thought of hurling it in the waste-paper basket in frustration but there was another instinctive response that came first: she reached for her wand and tapped the cover. Magical artifacts could be charmed so that they would only react to a particular wizard. The wizard's presence transmitted through the wand was necessary and sufficient. The cover popped open. Inside was a watch face. As Mrs. Macready looked she thought that the hands appeared to be flat, as if they were only painted on. Then hands and numbers all faded to a neutral gray. Then Ludovico's face appeared in the round window.

"Greetings, Mrs. Macready. It's been a long time. Didn't I tell you I had a means for transmitting pictures without wires? I can see you very clearly!"

"How did you manage to travel off the earth? Can I guess? You had the real rings all along, isn't that right?"

"Yes. I followed you to Prof. Kirke's house, much as you tried to follow me once. I overheard just a bit of your conversation. Knowing the nature of the rings, I could cast a spell to search for them. I had just enough time to remove the rings, replace them with duplicates, and put back the dirt. I was afraid you might detect my handiwork. I did my best to make the grass grow back. Luckily for me the good Professor didn't dig in exactly the same spot and no one noticed."

"I detected someone's presence faintly when we were looking at the rings."

"You might be wondering where the substitute rings came from. I made them years ago when I was working on this problem. I had a theory about them that needed to be tested out."

"I was fighting to defend fake rings!" Mrs. Macready protested with genuine outrage.

"Oh, now, Mrs. Macready, you had no difficulty with those Brothers, or should I say, those Bureau agents disguised as Brothers. I had no doubt you could deliver the rings to your superiors. If the agents had taken the rings then I suppose Athanasius would only have destroyed them sooner. And if the Brotherhood had captured them? They would no doubt have tried them and found them to be fake. They still would not know that I had the real ones. I had to do it, Mrs. Macready. I needed to be left in peace to do my work. And it has worked brilliantly, as you would be the first to attest. Things are very quiet in the Bureau as far as my file is concerned, aren't they, Mrs. Macready?"

She calmed down. She was happy to see the old wizard in spite of herself. "If you're going to go to this much trouble to contact me, do you mind telling me where you are?"

"I'm in Lincolnshire, near the town of Stratham."

There was a familiar ring to those names. Then she recalled it. "That's where Prof. Kirke has his country house."

"Exactly. There's something very interesting going on. Care to drop by for a visit?"

Mrs. Macready's thoughts returned to her childhood in Somerset. She saw it as it was then, the white painted cottages from the Queen Anne period with their tidy flower gardens. She remembered running along the lanes leading from the fields into the village, a vision colored all in the dazzling green of mid-summer. It was a tempting prospect to go back to that kind of setting, if only for a time. On her desk was a cardboard box with the gas mask distributed by the civil defense authorities. The larger world seemed to be coming apart with terrifying speed, and if one tried to look at the future there was no image that could be formed in the mind, only the fearful gaping darkness of the unknown.


	15. Chapter 15

_Author's note: It's embarrassing how long this process has dragged out. I highly recommend that writers not follow this example. It's difficult to leave something almost finished and then return to it weeks later._

* * *

How fresh and brisk was the morning air when Mrs. Macready burst open the French windows and stepped out on the terrace of Prof. Kirke's country house. What a glorious summer day it was going to be. The terrace was bordered by jasmine bushes with their fragrant white flowers. A breeze carried the smells from the thickly wooded grounds to the window. She thought how much she had missed this in the city. It wasn't just the weather or the surroundings that delighted her. She felt the excitement and anticipation of the new direction she was taking.

Mrs. Macready could have taken a leave of absence from the Bureau but that wouldn't have been fair to Gerald. He would have been left in the city. According to Ludovico there was no telling when, if ever, there would be new developments in the phenomenon he had detected in Lincolnshire. A conduit had been opened between worlds, he said, but nothing had yet gone through. It was like an opening in a wall through which you could feel the gentle stirring of cool air from the outside. There was no point taking a three-month leave to stand vigil over the conduit and have nothing happen. So she resigned. She was surprised at how easy and natural it felt. The Bureau already seemed far behind her.

As she expected, Gerald tried to contain his enthusiasm but it bubbled through. He didn't want to give the impression that he had been reluctant to move to the metropolis in the first place. She thought, he did deserve to have something kind done for him. When they had moved to London it had been necessary for him to quit the insurance firm where he had worked for thirteen years. Now he was uprooted again but this proved no prolonged difficulty. Ordinarily it would not have been easy for a man of his age to arrive in a new town and find suitable work but young men were enlisting and there were openings everywhere. It only took him a week to land the job in Stratham.

Ian had stayed in the city. He was staying in the basement of a friend's house. He had a job in an Italian restaurant and didn't want to leave, he said. Mrs. Macready suspected that what he was really thinking of was enlisting in the army. It was easier for him to just do it one day and let his parents know after the fact.

She had qualms about leaving London. It didn't seem right that she and Gerald had this opportunity and millions of others didn't. Strangely, it was the train conductor on the way down who had eased her sense of guilt. He had said, "Unless you have something to contribute to the war effort I don't see the need for you to stay. It makes you a more convenient target for the enemy. It isn't natural for a creature to stay in the sights of some hunter's gun, is it?"

Of course there was the fact that, had the Bureau discovered her involvement with Ludovico, she would be a fugitive in their view. She felt a twinge of anxiety about this but anxiety quickened her pulse and there was nothing wrong with an undercurrent of excitement. She told herself she was doing the right thing and she was willing to accept the consequences.

Mrs. Macready met Ludovico by the village inn, a renovated eighteenth-century merchant's house of timber and plaster. Mrs. Macready had almost convinced herself that Ludovico looked healthier in the country. He had a bit of a tan, as she did, from walking to and from the village. The lanes were really too narrow and dusty for driving, and Prof. Kirke did not keep horses any more. Ludovico was not wearing his overcoat but a tweed jacket, somewhat worn at the elbows.

"How are you settling in to your new career, Mrs. Macready? Rugs getting beaten on schedule?" He was beaming. The old wizard certainly smiled a good deal these days.

Mrs. Macready nodded. "The servants know their duties. Mostly, I arrange things and carry a heavy set of keys around. It helps that I do like a tidy house." To be honest, she admitted, the Professor seemed hardly to notice the housekeeping at all. She was reminded of her disapproval of the exotic bric-a-brac the Professor had brought back from his travels. Her tastes were for the plain and simple.

"Some time or other, I'm going to have to think of making a living," she remarked.

"Ah, so you don't want to make a career of housekeeping then? I've often thought that you had a natural pedagogic talent."

"Teaching? You mean maths, or Latin?"

"No, no! I mean, magic, of course."

"I don't know about joining that faculty at Gladhearts. Private lessons, though, that might be a possibility." She mused on this for a moment and then turned her attention back to the old wizard. "How is your work going?"

"Slowly but steadily. I am a baby yet, feeling my way in a new world."

"Oh, I have this to give back to you." She handed him the golden compass, the pocket Listener.

"What is the meaning of this? I explained why I gave it to you. I want to pinpoint the source of the inter-dimensional manifestation. I'm convinced that it is in that house and nowhere else."

Mrs. Macready thought of Prof. Kirke's words when she told him about Ludovico's plan. "You might not believe this but I never thought this matter was concluded with the loss of the rings. I can't imagine that my role in this is finished yet. You understand from what I told you before that I feel responsible for the White Witch being in Narnia. I must do anything I can to thwart her." He shook his head ruefully. "What you have told me gives me renewed hope. But I don't feel that it is my adventure to take. I think we should trust fate to work out the next step."

Mrs. Macready tried to explain to Ludovico. "I understand perfectly. I've been having long discussions about this with the Professor. Suppose this manifestation you've been studying has something to do with the White Witch's world. Prof. Kirke doesn't feel he should be visiting Narnia again. I don't think it's my part either. Narnia may be a magical world but it isn't my world and it isn't my magic. I don't want to know anything more specific about the source of the manifestation so that we won't be tempted to interfere. I don't want to chance upsetting things. I say that we should stand aside and let the story unfold as it should."

"I am surprised to hear this from you, Mrs. Macready, but it sounds very wise. I can trust you to stand guard in Prof. Kirke's mansion, should this manifestation produce any threat. In the meantime you must show an uncharacteristic patience. You know, I hadn't realized how peaceful the countryside is. The threat of war seems so far away."

"Not as far away as you think. I heard on the radio there are plans to evacuate children from the cities. The Professor is interested in opening his house to evacuees."

"A capital idea. I only hope that it doesn't disturb our researches. Come now, it is a fine summer day. Let us enjoy our time in the country."


End file.
